Transcript 1945 - Present - Cobb Learning

1945 - Present
The Modern Era
1945 – A Critical Year
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Yalta Conference
– The “Big Three”
 Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt
– Germany divided into 4
zones (US, GB, FR, USSR)
– Stalin promised free
elections
United Nations created
1945 (replaced League)
 US – 400,000 casualties
 USSR – 1 in 4 dead,
country in ruins
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Conflicting Postwar Goals
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The American View
– Establish democracy to
open up economic
opportunity
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The Soviet View
– Satellite nations –
spread communism
Cold War
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The Iron Curtain
– Winston Churchill – division
between democracy and
communism
East Germany, Czechoslovakia,
Poland, Hungary, Romania,
Bulgaria, Albania
Containment Policy
– Prevent spread of communism
– Support any nation threatened
by communism
Also known as the Truman
Doctrine
Issues Abroad
Europe in ruins
 The Marshall Plan to
rebuild Europe
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– Strengthen democracies to
stop communism
– Improve economies
– $13 billion in loans and
grants to Western Europe
Issues Abroad
3 western zones
merged (US, GB, FR)
 USSR angry
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– Stalin closes access to
West Berlin – people
were escaping
– Berlin Blockade
– US & GB send supplies
through Berlin Airlift
– 1949 Stalin lifts ban
Start of Cold War
Political struggle short
of military action or
war
 Spying, propaganda,
diplomacy, secret
operations
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NATO (North Atlantic
Treaty Organization)Collective Security
– Former WWII allies
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Warsaw Pact
– “satellite” nations
Threat of Nuclear War
Arms Race
 1949 – USSR develops atomic weapons
 1953 – USSR develops hydrogen bomb
 Eisenhower – 1953
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– US would retaliate against any aggression by
the USSR
– Brinkmanship – showed US was willing to go
to war
Pictures of bombs
The Space Race
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1957 – USSR launches
Sputnik
Yuri Gagarin – first man
in space
Science, math and
technology race
1961 – First American,
Alan Shepherd in space
1963 – John Glenn orbits
the earth
Laika and Gagarin
Glenn & Landing at Sea
The Space Race
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1969 – Neil Armstrong (Apollo 11)
becomes first man to walk on the moon
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Setbacks for NASA
– 1986 – Challenger explodes
– 2003 - Columbia explodes
Tensions
1960 – USSR shoots
down U-2 spy plane
 Gary F. Powers
captured
 Later released
 Heightens tensions
between US/USSR
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Communism Advances
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China
– Civil War – Jiang Jieshi
vs. Mao Zedong
– Had cooperated during
war against Japan
– 1949 falls to
Communists
– People’s Republic of
China (Communist)
– Republic of China
(Taiwan)
China
Mao sets up a strict communist state
 Millions of landlords killed, land distributed to
the peasants
 Great Leap Forward
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– Collective farms, communes
– Communal living, dining, child rearing
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Cultural Revolution – Peasant society
– Intellectual and artistic activity were the enemy
– “Purify” those who resisted
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Red Guard – militia units of young people
China
Korean War 1950-1953
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Division along 38th
parallel
Soviets support N. Korean
invasion of South in 1950
Truman feared another
“Axis” situation
UN sent forces under
Douglas Macarthur
China also supports NK
Pursued across 38th
parallel
Korean War
Chinese feel threatened; also sent troops
Pushed UN forces back toward 38th parallel
MacArthur wants a nuclear attack
Fired by Truman
War continues for 2 more years
1953 – Cease-fire
4 million dead, line back where it started
N. Korea develops nuclear weapons; south
prospers w/US help
 Kim Jong Il
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Korean War Memorial DC
Vietnam War
Part of containment
policy (like Korea)
 French Indochina
(Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos)
 Independence movement
led by Ho Chi Minh
 Communists and
Nationalists fought
French
 1954 – Defeated French
at Dien Bien Phu
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Vietnam War
Domino Theory – US
feared that if Vietnam
fell to communists, all
of Southeast Asia
would
 Vietnam divided at
17th parallel
 Ngo Din Diem – S.
Vietnam, anticommunist;
supported by U.S.
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Vietnam War
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Diem – dictator
Unpopular
Buddhist monks
protested (selfimmolation)
Communist guerillas
(Vietcong) grew
stronger
Diem assassinated in
1963
Kennedy Assassinated 1963
Vietnam War
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1964 – Gulf of Tonkin
Lyndon Johnson tells
Congress that US
destroyers were attacked
by Vietnamese boats
1965 – US sends troops
By 1968 – over ½
millions troops in VN
Guerilla tactics
Ho Chi Minh Trail brought
supplies
Vietnam War
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“Light at the end of the tunnel” – led
Americans to believe war was nearly over
1968 – Tet Offensive
Nixon - Vietnamization – plan to remove US
troops from Vietnam
War spreads to Cambodia
Unpopular at home – protests, draft card
burnings, draft-dodgers
Kent State killings – 4 students killed by
National Guard
Vietnam War
1973 – Last troops leave Vietnam
 1975 – N. Vietnamese overran Vietnam
 Saigon becomes Ho Chi Minh City
 1.5 million Vietnamese dead
 58,000 Americans dead
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Post War Southeast Asia
Cambodia – Communist rebels known as
Khmer Rouge set up brutal communist
government
 Pol Pot slaughtered 2 million people in
attempt to convert to communism
 Peasants moved to the countryside
 Intellectuals, educated killed
 The Killing Fields
 Cambodia and Laos fall to Communism
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Cambodia
Other Conflicts
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1959 – Fidel Castro leads communist revolution
in Cuba
1961- Bay of Pigs – failed US CIA backed plan to
overthrow Castro
Nuclear face off – The Cuban Missile Crisis
1962 – Khrushchev (USSR) begins building
missile bases in Cuba
Standoff between John F. Kennedy and
Khrushchev
Khrushchev backed down; US missiles removed
from Turkey
Other Conflicts
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U.S. backed Shah of Iran
westernizes the country
1979 – Ayatollah Khomeini
urges riots against secular
rule
Shah flees Iran
Islamic revolutionaries
seize 60 American
hostages for 444 days
Pres. Carter – failed rescue
attempt
Other Conflicts
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1979 – Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
Found themselves “stuck” in a Vietnam situation
Afghan rebels outmaneuvered a superpower
U.S. aided the mujahedeen (holy warriors)
Jimmy Carter boycotts 1980 Olympics & cuts off
grain to USSR
1989 – New President, Mikhail Gorbachev
withdraws Russian troops
Guess who was one of the anti-Soviet Afghan
heroes supported by the U.S.?........
The Cold War Thaws
Nixon follows policy of détente
 Visits communist China
 SALT – Strategic Arms Limitations Talks
(Nixon and Brezhnev)
 Gerald Ford also improves relations
 1981 – Ronald Reagan takes office
 Staunch anti communist
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Cold War cont.
Huge military and economic pressure on
USSR
 SDI – Strategic Defense Initiative “Star
Wars”
 1985 – New leader brings final thaw in
cold war (Gorbachev)
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– Glasnost “openness”, Perestroika “reform”
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1989 – Berlin Wall comes down
New Nations in Africa
African Nations Struggle
Ghana, Kenya, Algeria lead the way
 Civil War in Congo and Angola
 Bloodshed in Rwanda
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– Independence in 1962
– Ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis clashed
– Hutus slaughtered one million Tutsis
– Genocide; UN set up tribunals
– “Hotel Rwanda”
Middle East
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1948 - Israel becomes a
country
Great sympathy for Jews
after WWII
Hostility and conflict with
Arab States who claimed
Palestine too
Several Arab-Israeli wars
PLO – Palestinian
Liberation Organization
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Carried out numerous
attacks against Israel
Camp David Accords –
peace treaty brokered by
Jimmy Carter (Nobel Peace
Prize)
Menachem Begin and
Anwar Sadat
Egypt’s Anwar Sadat later
assassinated
Continued conflict and
violence
September 11, 2001
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Planes piloted by terrorists attack the U.S.
2 planes fly into the World Trade Center (1993 attempt
had failed)
1 flew into the Pentagon
Flight 93 – taken by passengers trying to fight back,
crashed in Pennsylvania
2001 - US invades Afghanistan, overthrows Taliban
Invades Iraq – Operation Iraqi Freedom
Saddam Hussein overthrown, executed for war crimes
(poison gas) against Kurds
Osama Bin Ladin – killed by SEALs in 2011
– Also responsible for bombings of US embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania