Chapter 6

Question 1

Cold War intro

Answer 1

• The Cold War, was an American-Soviet ideological and geopolitical struggle. The Soviets defended communism and the Americans defended capitalism and democracy.
• The end of World War II marked the end of Western Europe’s supremacy over the world and the rise of two or superpowers, the USSR and the United States (the picture below was taken during the Potsdam Conference. Clement Attlee, the new British Prime Minister, and Harry Truman met with Joseph Stalin of the USSR after the end of World War II in Europe).

Question 2

territorial divides

Answer 2

• After World War II, Germany was divided in four zones occupied by the allies (USA, USSR, Great Britain and France).
• Berlin, the German capital, was also divided in four parts even if it was over 150 kilometers into the Soviet zone.
• The Americans, the British and the French reunited their three occupation zones into West Germany (German Federal Republic) in 1949.
• Stalin refused to join and he imposed a communist dictatorship in East Germany (it became the German Democratic Republic).

Question 3

what was americas reaction to the current international climate

Answer 3

• In 1948, the Americans began implementing the Marshall Plan. George Marshall, the American Secretary of State, designed it.
• Marshall had exposed his goals in 1947: “It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos”.

Question 4

Marshall Plan

Answer 4

• This plan aimed at kick-starting the economy and repairing the infrastructures of West Germany and the other European countries that had been ravaged by the war.
• The Marshall Plan “provided $13 billion in aid to sixteen nations over five years” (The Bedford Glossary for U.S. History, 2007, p.55).
• The USSR refused to take money from the Marshall Plan even if it was arguably the country that suffered the most during World War II.

Question 5

USSR reaction to Marshall plan

Answer 5

• The USSR also forced the new communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe such as East Germany to reject economic assistance from the Americans.
• Moreover, Stalin even tried to control the entire city of Berlin before the completion of the division of Germany in 1949.
• He decided to block the access to Berlin, a city of 2.5 million inhabitants, by roads and railroads (June, 1948).
• The citizens of West Berlin were cut from the outside world. They were Stalin’s hostages.
• This international crisis is called the Berlin Blockade (it lasted 11 months).

Question 6

Berlin Blockade

Answer 6

• Stalin’s strategy to control Berlin in its entirety was a failure because of the Berlin Air Lift.
• The Americans and the British sent 227,000 flights over Berlin (about 800 per day).
• The planes dropped supplies to insure the welfare of the citizens of Berlin.
• The United States demonstrated that they were willing to take action to contain the growth of Communism.
• By the end of the 1940s, Stalin still had reasons to be satisfied despite his failure to put the entire city of Berlin under communist control.

Question 7

USSR alliances

Answer 7

• The year 1949 was positive for Stalin. He saw Mao Zedong, his fellow communist; take power in China and the USSR developed its first atomic bomb.
• Stalin also knew that he had already established communist dictatorships in all the Eastern European countries that had been “liberated” by the Red Army at the end of World War II (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria).
• Stalin wanted to use these “satellite countries” of the USSR to be a buffer zone that would prevent another attack on the western border of the USSR.

Question 8

How did the us feel about the USSR “alliances”

Answer 8

• President Truman of the USA was very angry that Stalin used his military interests as an excuse to prevent democratic elections in European countries that share a border with the USSR.
• The Americans adopted a policy of containment to stop the growth of communism (it was developed by George Kennan and supported by President Truman who also had the similar Truman Doctrine).

Question 9

two camps names

Answer 9

• Winston Churchill said that “an iron curtain fell”. This ideological barrier separated Europe between capitalist democracies in Western Europe and communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe.
• This division led to the formation of two new military alliances: NATO (1949) led by the United States and the Warsaw Pact (1955) led by the USSR “the dream of a stable peace was replaced by the specter of nuclear annihilation” (Duiker & Momani, 2007, p.113)

Question 10

were Russian germans live laugh loving in these conditions

Answer 10

• Germany would remain divided for the next 40 years. It remained an important front during the Cold War during these four decades.
• Approximately 3 million Germans fled communist East Germany between 1949 and 1961. This represented 20 percent of the total population of East Germany.
• Walter Ulbricht, the communist leader of East Germany, asked the Soviet Union for a solution to this embarrassing problem.
• The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from freely moving to West Berlin (the part of Berlin controlled by the Americans and their allies).

Question 11

Berlin Wall

Answer 11

• The Berlin wall was 155 kilometers long and it stopped the massive migration out of East Germany (Only 5,000 people managed to escape from East Germany between 1961 and 1989).
• Moreover, the East German government hired 30,000 guards (i.e., the Vopos) to make sure that the people of East Germany would not leave their new communist dictatorship (the Stasi, the secret police, and also prevented departures and protests. Agents of the Stasi spied on 1/3 of the population of East Germany!).
• In 1963, President John F. Kennedy quickly deplored that the Berlin Wall was the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the entire world to see. -The Berlin wall was a symbol of oppression that inspired many great artists to denounced it through hit songs such as Heroes by David Bowie, I’m Free by the Rolling Stones, 99 Red Balloons by Nena or films such as The Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders.

Question 12

Berlin Wall

Answer 12

• The Berlin wall was 155 kilometers long and it stopped the massive migration out of East Germany (Only 5,000 people managed to escape from East Germany between 1961 and 1989).
• Moreover, the East German government hired 30,000 guards (i.e., the Vopos) to make sure that the people of East Germany would not leave their new communist dictatorship (the Stasi, the secret police, and also prevented departures and protests. Agents of the Stasi spied on 1/3 of the population of East Germany!).
• In 1963, President John F. Kennedy quickly deplored that the Berlin Wall was the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the entire world to see. -The Berlin wall was a symbol of oppression that inspired many great artists to denounced it through hit songs such as Heroes by David Bowie, I’m Free by the Rolling Stones, 99 Red Balloons by Nena or films such as The Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders.

Question 13

Korea territotieres end WW2

Answer 13

-At the end of World War II, the Allies forced Japan to leave Korea, a territory it had occupied by force since 1910.
-Like Germany, the Korean peninsula had been divided after World War II (because Stalin blocked the United Nations from organizing a free election to form a government for a reunified Korea).
Link to a map of the division of Korea after World War II: https://www.sutori.com/item/1945-division-leads-to-war-in-korea-korea-was-independent-until-japan-had-conqu
-The Americans occupied the southern half of Korea and the Soviets had the northern half (it was divided at the 38th Parallel).
-The two superpowers left Korea in 1947. They left their area in the hands of a government who reflected their respective political ideologies.

Question 14

intro cause Korean War

Answer 14

• Kim Il Sung, a communist who had heroically resisted Japan’s occupation was ruling the North and Syngman Rhee, a Korean who studied at Princeton, a prestigious American university, was in charge of the South.
• In 1950, the communist leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, quickly invaded the southern half of Korea (He had the approval of his fellow communists from China and the USSR).

Question 15

international reactions and alliances Korean War

Answer 15

Kim Il Sung underestimated how President Truman of the USA hated communism.
The Americans supported South Korea with the approval of the United Nations (the Soviets were not there to oppose this. They temporarily boycotted the United Nations because this organization still did not recognize the new communist government of China).
-The Americans and their allies (15 other countries including Canada) pushed the North Koreans out of the ports of Inchon and Pusan with great difficulty.
-It allowed the Americans and their allies to land troops in Korea and push the exhausted North Korean invaders out of South Korea.
-General Douglas MacArthur, the leader of the American-led UN forces, had masterfully managed to rescue South Korea from an invasion.

Question 16

did the k war go well for the Americans

Answer 16

• MacArthur became overconfident and extended the conflict when his troops entered North Korea.
• MacArthur’s troops were initially successful. After only two months of fighting, it looked like the end was near for North Korea’s communist government.
• But Mao Zedong, the new communist leader of China, did not like seeing foreign troops from capitalist countries so close to China.

Question 17

new player end K war

Answer 17

• This led China to rush to the rescue of their fellow communists of North Korea.
• A large army of 300,000 Chinese entered North Korea undetected. This human tsunami completely overwhelmed MacArthur’s stunned army.
• The Chinese and North Koreans managed to quickly regain control of North Korea.
• The Chinese and North Koreans even returned into South Korean territory before the Americans and their allies reorganized and push their communist enemies out of South Korea definitively.

Question 18

k war result

Answer 18

• This exhausting conflict reached a stalemate in 1951 and peace talks began. The fighting continued until 1953. It basically ended in a draw.
• The border between the two Koreas remained the 38th Parallel in spite of the deaths of approximately 3 million people during the war (veterans of the Korean War include celebrities such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, John Glenn, Clint Eastwood, Johnny Cash, Michael Caine and Ted Williams).
• The belligerents signed a truce but they never signed a peace treaty: “The Korean conflict was the first major military battle of the Cold War between democracy and communism, and it did not result in WWIII or nuclear annihilation. But neither did it result in a clear victory for either side.” (Hallock, 2013, p. 152)
• Korea still remains divided. There is still distrust between the two governments of the Korean peninsula.
• The border between the two Koreas is the most militarized border in the world (even if it is called the DMZ/Demilitarized zone).

Question 19

Korea 2 day

Answer 19

• North Korea still has a totalitarian communist regime led by Kim Jong-Un, the grandson of Kim Il Sung. They still use penal labor camps for political prisoners.
• North Korean still remains the most isolated country in the world. It is often called “the hermit kingdom’’. Television and radio stations are controlled by the dictatorial government.
• Cell phones and the internet remain illegal for the masses (North Koreans systematically blame the United States for their country’s failure to develop).
• On the other hand, South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world (it is the home of large corporations such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG).
• Therefore, the reunification of Korea seems improbable.

Question 20

next Cold War event after k war

Answer 20

• The next crisis of the Cold War concerned the fate of Cuba.
• During the 1950’s Cuba was ruled by Fulgencio Batista, a pro-American dictator who had taken power by force before the election of 1952.

Question 21

American- cuban relationships in early 1950

Answer 21

• Batista welcomed American investments for touristic and military infrastructures in his tropical island (American gangsters such as Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky controlled casinos, drugs and prostitution in Cuba).
• American corporations such as the United Fruit Company (UFC), Exxon and Texaco also owned 70 percent of the land and natural resources in Cuba.

Question 22

did people like fulgencio Batista

Answer 22

-Cuba was not a paradise for all the Cubans. Many Cubans were extremely poor and they were tired of Batista’s corrupted and oppressive government (over 20,000 Cubans were killed for opposing Batista’s corrupted government).

Question 23

Fulgencio Batista opposition

Answer 23

• Fidel Castro was among the opponents of Batista. He had been arrested after an uprising in 1953.
• Castro began another rebellious movement in 1956 after spending two years in prison and living in exile in Mexico for one year.
• Castro started to unite the Cubans who wanted land reforms and more social justice.

Question 24

castro possey

Answer 24

-Fidel Castro’s group of revolutionaries included his brother Raul and the famous Argentine, Che Guevara.

Question 25

take over cuba

Answer 25

• The revolutionaries defeated Batista’s troops in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra and they triumphantly made their way towards Havana.
• The defenseless Batista fled to Spain with an enormous fortune after being warned by the United States that he would not get any military support.

Question 26

castro reform

Answer 26

• Castro quickly improved healthcare and education in Cuba and he also offered pensions for the elders (he did all this even if President Eisenhower refused to give economic assistance to Cuba).
• On the other hand, Cuba remained a dictatorship. Castro censored the press and he banned political parties.
• Castro also forbid private ownership of large estates and foreign ownership of Cuban property (70 percent of the land was owned by foreigners during Batista’s rule).

Question 27

usa reaction Castro reforms

Answer 27

• This offended the Americans who did not expect Castro to go ahead with radical reforms.
• Castro’s policies led the Americans to impose an embargo on Cuba (American goods could not be shipped to Cuba and Cuban goods could not be shipped to the United States. Travelling between Cuba and the USA was also prohibited).
• The embargo forced Castro to turn to the USSR, the other superpower, for help.

Question 28

us show of force in cuba

Answer 28

• In 1961, President John F. Kennedy funded an attack of a force composed of about 1,300 Cuban exiles who wanted to invade Cuba and topple Castro (the poor plan had been designed at the end of Eisenhower’s presidency).
• They landed on the Bay of Pigs (i.e., Bahia de Cochinos) and they were quickly defeated by Cuban troops. The lack of American air support doomed this ill-fated mission.
• Castro still felt seriously threatened by the Americans despite his convincing victory at the Bay of Pigs.

Question 29

USSR reaction bay of pigs

Answer 29

• Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the USSR, installed soviet missiles to intimidate the United States and protect Castro’s communist regime.
• This was a great opportunity for the USSR to put missiles near the United States (the Americans were threatening the Soviets with missiles in Turkey, on the southern border of the USSR).
• President Kennedy replied by ordering the American Navy to block the access to Cuba.
• The blockade was a risky gamble that could have had increase the tension to an even higher level.

Question 30

un meeting cuban missile crisis

Answer 30

• It paid off by giving the Americans time to talk with the USSR at the United Nations (Kennedy was obviously worried by the security of his country but the danger was even more imminent for his presidency. His popularity and his chances of reelection in 1964 would have plummeted if Soviet missiles would remain in Cuba).
• The Soviets tried to deny that they wanted to install missiles but the Americans had embarrassing aerial photographs to prove that the Soviets were lying.

Question 31

set

Answer 31

• But the Cold War was far from over. The Americans were still determined to contain the growth of communism.
• Kennedy’s short presidency was also marked by the increasing involvement of the Americans in Vietnam.

Question 32

vietnam b4 vietnam war

Answer 32

• Vietnam was part of Indochina, a French colony since the 19th Century.
• The French had lost this territory to the Japanese who controlled Southeast Asia during World War II.
• After World War II, the nationalist and communist leader Ho Chi Minh and his supporters, the Vietminh, had used force to resist the French who tried to reassert their control over Indochina.
• Ho’s Vietminh army fought against the French between 1946 and 1954. This is known as the First Indochina War.
• The French were defeated despite receiving help from the Americans.
• France agreed sign a treaty that stipulated that Ho’s communist regime would be restricted to the northern half of Vietnam (North Vietnam).

Question 33

what did ho want to acomplish and how did the international community react

Answer 33

• Ho agreed. His tremendous popularity made him confident that he could reunite Vietnam quickly under his rule once the French left his homeland: most people in Vietnam, both north and south, loved Ho chi Minh. He was their George Washington-he successfully led the revolutionary movement to free them from colonial oppression (Hallock, 2013, p. 194).
• But Ho was communist and the Americans were determined to contain the spread of communism at all cost.
• The Americans were afraid that all the countries in Asia would become communist if they would let Ho take all of Vietnam: If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we`ll be fighting in Hawaii and next week we`ll have to be fighting in San Francisco. Lyndon Johnson, 1964.
• Therefore, the Americans supported the unpopular government of South Vietnam. It was an effort to prevent Ho’s communists from ruling the entire country.

Question 34

america reaction vietnam independence

Answer 34

• It was during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) that the Americans became massively involved in Vietnam due to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (the Gulf of Tonkin is between Northern Vietnam and Southern China).
• President Lyndon B. Johnson falsely claimed that two American ships were attacked by the North Vietnamese while they were in the Gulf of Tonkin.
• Before the Johnson presidency (1963-1968), the conflict was a civil war that opposed Ho Chi Minh and the unpopular government of South Vietnam (with support from about 15,000 Americans).

Question 35

two major players and hiow that affected the war v

Answer 35

Ho Chi Minh, the Army of North Vietnam (NVA) and the Vietcong army (South Vietnamese communists) were determined to unify Vietnam.

• The main problem of the Americans was that they underestimated the motivation of their enemies.
• The Americans hoped that simple bombing would be enough to crush the communists who wanted to bring communism to South Vietnam (more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than the number of bombs that had been dropped on Europe and Japan during World War II).
• By 1967 it became blatantly obvious that the bombings were not going to discourage the Communists and that the South Vietnamese army was overmatched.
• The Americans sent close to 500,000 soldiers in Vietnam by the end of 1967 (Hallock, 2013).

Question 36

what viet war like

Answer 36

-It did not lead to satisfying results for President Johnson because “American soldiers found themselves in a baffling war unlike any they had fought before. The first problem was figuring out who the enemy was.” (Hallock, 2013, p. 197)

Question 37

tet offensive

Answer 37

The American cause already seemed hopeless in 1968 after the surprising Tet Offensive.

• The Vietcong and the NVA attacked military bases, radio station, airports and government buildings in large cities of South Vietnam such as Saigon, Hue and Khe Sanh during the Tet (i.e., the lunar New Year festival).
• It was a major holiday during which there had been ceasefires in previous years so the Americans and the government of South Vietnam were surprised by this large and well-planned attack. Red spots on this map indicate places that were attacked by the Vietcong during the Tet Offensive.

Question 38

tet offensive reactions

Answer 38

• The Tet Offensive proved that the war was far from over and that there had been very little progress since the Americans became actively involved in the conflict back in 1964.
• The Tet Offensive also attracted very negative and critical coverage by the American media.

-Vietnam was the first televised war and the television networks, newspapers and magazines were not censored by the American government.
-Graphic images of death and total destruction turned public opinion against the war in Vietnam.
Link to a gallery of pictures of the Vietnam War: https://time.com/vietnam-photos/

Question 39

tet offensive consequences

Answer 39

• After the Tet Offensive, the American military counteroffensive was amazingly successful from a military standpoint but it did not change the negative perception of the war in the United States.
• After the Tet offensive, the Americans remained in Vietnam for pride mainly (The Americans began to try to find a compromise with the Communists of Vietnam. The year 1968 was also marked by the outrageous My Lai Massacre during which American troops tortured, raped and killed more than 500 unarmed Vietnamese peasants).

Question 40

what made vietnam wafr complicated

Answer 40

• The Americans had many victories after 1968 but officers such as General Westmorland did not know how to win a war without a front in a foreign land.
• They also could not count on dependable support from the South Vietnamese troops.

Question 41

did the viet war have popular support

Answer 41

• President Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, did not want to be the first Commander in Chief (i.e., the President) to admit defeat. However, they both suffered from a credibility gap.
• It did not matter what they would do or say about the war. The media and the public no longer trusted them and they wanted the Vietnam War to end.
• Many American civilians could not stand the horrors they saw on the daily news and the newspapers.
• The Vietnam War led to massive protest in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. More than 200 universities such as Columbia and Berkeley saw large anti-war protests (even the veterans turned against the war they had fought when they returned to the United States).
• The most famous protest was Woodstock. This counter-culture extravaganza was an enormous outdoor concert held on a muddy field of dairy farm in the town of Bethel, New York during the summer of 1969.
• It was the coming out party for more than 400,000 “Baby Boomers” (people who had been born after World War II). They watched performances from artists who were against the Vietnam War such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Joe Cocker and Santana (The event was poorly planned. Parking spaces were scarce and they only had 500 toilets!).

Question 42

other protests other than woodstock

Answer 42

• Young Americans hated the war mainly because of the draft. This draft was randomly picking men and forcing them to go fight in Vietnam. It was necessary to find soldiers this way due to the shortage of volunteers and the constant demands of the army to find more soldiers. This song Country Joe McDonald was denouncing the draft
• Another anti-war manifestation was the bloody protest at Kent State University (Ohio) in 1970. Students were protesting against the expansion of the war in Cambodia by President Nixon.
• Trigger-happy soldiers murdered four students. It brought a tragic conclusion to a week on protest and vandalism on this large campus.

Question 43

draft popular ?

Answer 43

• Others such as Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight-boxing champion of the world, refused to be drafted back in 1967 and he was suspended for 2 years.
• About 50,000 draft dodgers moved to Canada to avoid military service in Vietnam, (other celebrities avoided going to Vietnam such as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani)

Question 44

Viet war ending

Answer 44

-Richard Nixon who was elected in 1968 and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had realize that victory was unlikely for the Americans and searched for a way to obtain peace with honor.

• Nixon and Kissinger finally pulled out American troops in 1973 after agreeing to a peace treaty (Lyndon Johnson did not seek reelection in 1968 because of the mounting protest against the war. Nixon replaced him and he was reelected in 1972).
• Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for negotiating a peace treaty with the Vietnamese communists.
• The North Vietnamese were allowed to maintain troops in South Vietnam but they had to respect a ceasefire and they released American POWs (prisoners of war).
• This marked the end of the longest war in American history up to that point.

Question 45

viet war consequences

Answer 45

• Approximately 2.5 million Americans served in Vietnam and over 47,000 American soldiers died during this conflict. The conflict also caused the death of over 3 million Vietnamese (Hallock, 2013). Famous Veterans of this war include Oliver Stone, Al Gore, Roger Staubach, Colin Powell, John McCain and John Kerry.
• The communists did not respect the ceasefire. They quickly defeated the South Vietnamese army that was badly outmatched without American support.
• Vietnam was unified under a communist government in 1975, after the fall of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), the capital of South Vietnam.
• It was followed by the departure of thousands of boat people/refugees who fled the communist regimes Southeast Asia. The United States took 20 years to officially recognize the communist government of Vietnam. Vietnam suffered for many years from the physical and environmental destruction of their country by American troops who used napalm and the chemical weapons such as agent orange.

Question 46

1970 vibes

Answer 46

• The 1970’s were marked by a period of détente (i.e., easing of tensions) between the USA and the USSR.
• However, tension was still palpable between the two superpowers especially in fields where they could be in direct competition such as sports and science.
• This was especially true during sporting events such as the Miracle on Ice at the Lake Placid winter Olympics of 1980 and the victory of Bobby Fischer, a young American prodigy, over Boris Spassky at the World Championship of Chess in 1972 (Canada also contributed by defeating the Soviets, during the Summit Series, back in 1972).
• Link to a video of Game 6 of the 1972 World Championship of Chess from the movie Pawn Sacrifice. It’s considered to be the best chess match ever played. Bobby Fischer was the first and he remains the only American to win this title.

Question 47

hockey and the cold war

Answer 47

-The Miracle on Ice remains one of the biggest upsets in the history of sports. Players of the USSR could not play in the NHL during the Cold War. Hence, all the best Soviet players were allowed to play in the Olympic tournament. NHL players from Canada and the USA were not allowed to play since they were not amateur athletes. Professional athletes could not compete in the Olympic games before 1992. Thus, most American players were amateurs from NCAA teams and most Soviet players were as good as the top players of the NHL. This is why the USSR had won four consecutive Golf Medals in ice hockey before the monumental upset of the 1980 winter Olympics. Interestingly, the American Olympic hockey team had never lost a game in the USA until they were defeated by a Canadian team loaded with NHL stars at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Question 48

space race

Answer 48

• Space exploration was another front of the Cold War.
• The USSR took the lead in 1957 by launching Sputnik satellite, the first manmade object to orbit the earth (the Soviets also sent Laika, a dog, in space during that year).
• On April 12, 1961 the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space (he was in the capsule Vostok 1 for about 2 hours).
• President Kennedy replied six weeks later by investing massively in the Space Program of the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).
• This allowed the Americans to eventually take the lead with the Apollo program (3 astronauts died during one of the first rocket launching experiments. The Apollo 13 mission was also a disaster).
• The Americans landed the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, in 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission (the Apollo 11 mission lasted 8 days. The astronauts were on the moon less than 22 hours. The event was watched by 500 million viewers!!! Armstrong was accompanied by Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. The Soviets never managed to land a man on the moon).

-The Americans had won the Space race. Public interest declined immediately after that and there hasn’t been a human on the moon since 1972 (i.e., the Apollo 17 mission).

Question 49

consiparcy theory 70s

Answer 49

-An increasing number of Americans believe that the moon landing never happened and that it was filmed in a Hollywood studio. It’s highly unlikely that a secret this big could have been kept for so long especially if we consider that the Cold War ended in 1991. The Moon Landing remains one of the most expansive projects in the history of the American government and one of the great scientific achievements in the history of humankind. The astronauts brought back samples of the soil of the moon, the MythBusters of Discovery Chanel discredited all the arguments of the conspiracy theorists in a memorable episode and the Buzz Aldrin once knocked out a conspiracy theorist who was stalking him but the doubt about the moon landing continues to grow.

Question 50

ragan and the cold war

Answer 50

-During the 1980’s Ronald Reagan reheated the Cold War.
Military tension was present once again. Reagan’s presidency marked a return to the arms race.
-Reagan believed that détente was unsafe for the United States.
-He was the first American president who really acted to make the United States win the Cold War (without fighting a direct war against the USSR).
-According to Reagan, the strategy of détente could not lead to the end of the Cold War because it assured the USSR, which he often called the “Evil Empire”, that the Americans would not move ahead of them from a military standpoint.
-His objective was to discourage the Soviets by outspending them in a renewed arms race.
-The stagnant economy of the USSR would prevent the Soviets from matching the ever-growing American military budget.

Question 51

regan oppostion (international)

Answer 51

• During Reagan’s presidency, the Americans also financed the Mujahideen, who were Jihadists who fought against the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. The Soviets wanted to protect the secular communist government of Nur Mohammed Taraki. They finally withdrew their troops in 1989 (The ensuing chaos led to the rise of the Mullah Omar, the Islamist leader of the Taliban).
• The Cold War ended for good during the magical years of 1989-1991.
• The new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, accepted more transparency and economic reforms in the USSR.

Question 52

gotbachev political choices

Answer 52

• Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 1990 because of that (he did not imitate the communist government of China who used extreme brutality to end the student demonstration of Tiananmen Square in 1989).
• The Hungarians opened their border with Austria for the first time since communism had been impose on them by Stalin after World War II. This was the first breach in the iron curtain that had divided Eastern and Western Europe for over 40 years (Hungary had already given a very popular and addictive game to capitalist countries during the 1980s, the famous Rubik’s Cube).

Question 53

slow departure of cumminism

Answer 53

-The communist government of East Germany also told its citizens that they could move freely to West Germany for the first time since the construction of the Berlin Wall. There were finally holes in the iron curtain.

• The peoples of Eastern Europe were regaining freedom of movement and freedom of speech.
• The citizens of communist countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania took this opportunity to get rid of their oppressive communist governments.
• Communist dictators were replaced by popular dissidents such as the playwright Vaclav Havel (Czechoslovakia) and the union leader Lech Walesa (Poland).
• The Romanians ended the rule of their dictator, Nicolai Ceausescu, in a horrifically brutal televised execution.
• Ceausescu was unpopular for strictly rationing basic goods (bread, sugar, flour…) and for forcibly removing people from small towns in order to urbanize Romania.
• His cruel and corrupt dictatorship came to an end when the army refused to continue killing people who were denouncing the ill-advised policies of Ceausescu.

Question 54

end iron curtain event

Answer 54

• In East Berlin, the people destroyed the wall with their peers of West Berlin to effectively reunify their city.
• The fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated the following summer during an historic concert by Pink Floyd that featured other guest artists such as Cindy Lauper, Joni Mitchell, Bryan Adams and Scorpions. The concert attracted 350,000 spectators to Berlin.
• West and East Germany was quickly reunited and the communist government of East Germany was pushed aside.
• The iron curtain that had divided Europe for 45 years was not only breached. It was finally destroyed.

Question 55

gorbachev fate

Answer 55

• In 1991, the USSR also became a thing of the past. Reactionary forces from the military tried to make a coup d’état by kidnapping Gorbachev who had unintendedly lost control over his major reforms.
• Examples of the disintegration of the leadership of Communist party of the USSR include: intense criticism of the government by journalists, the Red Army leaving Afghanistan and anti-Russian nationalist movements were rising quickly in the Socialist Republics (especially in the Baltic countries that organized a Human chain of 1 million persons. These former countries had never accepted their integration into the USSR after World War II).

Question 56

ussr changes in power

Answer 56

• The reactionaries who kidnapped Gorbachev also ordered the Red Army to repress the Soviet masses that did not support the coup against Gorbachev.
• Boris Yeltsin, a prominent political supporter of Gorbachev’s reforms, convinced the soldiers of the Red Army to disobey their officers and join the demonstrators.
• The reactionaries were overwhelmed by the protests against their unpopular coup. They released Gorbachev.
• The Communist Party that governed the USSR with an iron fist since the revolution of 1917 disbanded. Not even Gorbachev could not return to power.
• Journalists and politicians around the world were stunned to see the rapidity of the collapse of the USSR (nowadays historians tend to be amazed at how long the communists held on to power considering how the Soviet system inefficient and corrupt for decades).
• Yeltsin was now the most popular politician in the former USSR and he easily won the first presidential elections of new Russian republic in 1991.

Question 57

end cold war

Answer 57

-Russia also recognized the independence of 14 former republics of the USSR.
Link to a map of the the former USSR: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-countries-made-up-the-former-soviet-union-ussr.html
-The Cold War was finally over. The famous political scientist Francis Fukuyama claimed that it was the end of history because it marked the definitive triumph of democracy and capitalism: “What we may be witnessing is the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is the end point of man’s ideological evolution and universalization of Western liberal democracy”.
-After the Cold War, the consensus among political leaders, scholars and business tycoons was that spread capitalism around the world would be followed by the growth democracy. The growth of global capitalism during the last three decades is undeniable. China and many other countries have experienced unprecedented levels of economic growth. On the other hand, democracy hasn’t grown as much. Dictatorships remain common in many parts of the world and populism is growing in many democratic countries.