IWP IR Historical Events

Ferdinand Foch

"Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies" on 26 March 1918 following being the Commander-in-Chief of Western Front with title Généralissime in 1918. He played a decisive role in halting a renewed German advance on Paris in the Second Battle of the Marne, after which he was promoted to Marshal of France. Foch considered the Treaty of Versailles too lenient on Germany and as the Treaty was being signed on 28 June 1919, he declared: "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years".

Zollverein

1834: Coalition of German states formed to manage tariffs and economic policies within their territories. The foundation of the Zollverein was the first instance in history in which independent states had consummated a full economic union without the simultaneous creation of a political federation or union.

EMS Telegram

1870: Telegram of letter from Prussian King to Otto von Bismark outlining the French Ambassadors demands. Incited the Franco Prussian War.

Franco-Prussian War

1870: War due to Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded.The German conquest of France and the unification of Germany upset the European balance of power that had existed since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and Otto von Bismarck maintained great authority in international affairs for two decades. French determination to regain Alsace-Lorraine and fear of another Franco-German war, along with British apprehension about the balance of power, became factors in the causes of World War I.

Triple Alliance

1882: a secret agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Germany and Austria-Hungary had been closely allied since 1879. The treaty provided that Germany and Austria-Hungary were to assist Italy if it was attacked by France without provocation. In turn, Italy would assist Germany if attacked by France. In the event of a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Italy promised to remain neutral.

Bismark Dismissed

1890: dismissed by Wilhelm over sovereign interference in foreign policy; predicted WWI over "a future conflict over some damn foolish thing in the Balkans."

Spanish- American War

1898: Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor in Cuba leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. American acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions led to its involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately in the Philippine-American War. Ended in the Treaty of Paris in which Spain relinquishes sovereignty over Cuba, cedes Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands to the United States for $20 million

Triple Entente

1907: Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente on 31 August 1907. The understanding between the three powers, supplemented by agreements with Japan and Portugal, constituted a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance

Balkan Wars

1912-1913: Four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire in the first war; one of the four, Bulgaria, suffered defeat in the second war. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Austria-Hungary, although not a combatant, became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the Balkan crisis of 1914 and thus served as a "prelude to the First World War"

Schlieffen Plan

1914: Name given after World War I to the thinking behind the German invasion of France and Belgium on 4 August. It was created by the German Chief of Staff Alfred von Schlieffen in 1903 the request of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It was revised in 1905.

Lusitania

1915: sinking of the Lusitania by German U Boats; included with the Zimmerman telegram as the reason the US declared war on Germany

Russian Civil War

1917-1922; consisted of the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests favoring monarchism, capitalism and alternative forms of socialism, each with democratic and antidemocratic variants.

Bolshvik Revolution

1917: the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the workers' Soviets overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd and established the Russian SFSR, eventually shifting the capital to Moscow in 1918. The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent.

Polish-Soviet War

1919 - 1921; pitted Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic over the control of an area equivalent to today's Ukraine and parts of modern-day Belarus. Ultimately the Soviets, following on from their Westward Offensive of 1918-19, hoped to fully occupy Poland. Polish victory.

Mein Kampf

1925: autobiography of Adolf Hitler

Kellogg Briand Pact

1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them." Parties failing to abide by this promise "should be denied of the benefits furnished by this treaty." It was signed by Germany, France, and the United States

Smoot Hawley Tariff

1930: The Act and following retaliatory tariffs by America's trading partners helped reduce American exports and imports by more than half during the Depression;[4] but economists disagree by how much

Purges

1936-1938: large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants and the Red Army leadership, and widespread police surveillance, suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions under Stalin

Show Trials

1936-1938; The defendants of these were Old Bolshevik party leaders and top officials of the Soviet secret police. Most defendants were charged under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code with conspiring with the western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore capitalism. The Moscow Trials led to the execution of many of the defendants. They are generally seen as part of Stalin's Great Purge, an attempt to rid the party of current or prior oppositionists, especially but not exclusively Trotskyists, and any leading Bolshevik cadre from the time of the Russian Revolution or earlier, who might even potentially become a figurehead for the growing discontent in the Soviet populace resulting from Stalin's mismanagement of the economy

Spanish Civil War

1936-1939; fought between the Republicans, who were loyal to the democratic, left-leaning and relatively urban Second Spanish Republic in an alliance of convenience with the Anarchists, versus the Nationalists, a falangist, Carlist and a largely aristocratic conservative group led by General Francisco Franco. Although the war is often portrayed as a struggle between democracy and fascism, some historians consider it more accurately described as a struggle between leftist revolution and rightist counterrevolution. Ultimately, the Nationalists won, and Franco then ruled Spain for the next 36 years, from April 1939 until his death in November 1975.

Non-aggression pacts (Stalin-Hitler Pact)

1939: German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, in which the two countries agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years. With Europe on the brink of another major war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin viewed the pact as a way to keep his nation on peaceful terms with Germany, while giving him time to build up the Soviet military. German chancellor Adolf Hitler used the pact to make sure Germany was able to invade Poland unopposed. The pact also contained a secret agreement in which the Soviets and Germans agreed how they would later divide up Eastern Europe. The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact fell apart in June 1941, when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union.

Fall of France

1940-Also known as the Battle of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. German's pushed the British Forces (British Expeditionary Force BEF) and French forces (Dunkirk) back to the sea in Operation Dynamo. French leaders became resigned to an inevitable surrender. On June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany.

Holocaust

1941-1945 genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis.

VE Day, VJ Day

1945. V.E Day celebrating Victory in Europe and the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Americans celebrated V-J day (victoryover Japan) when the Allies accepted Nazi Germany's official surrender which had previously been caleld "Victory of Europe Day", or "V-E Day"

Korean War

1950-1953.It began as a civil war between N. and S. Korea, but the conflict soon became international when, under U.S. leadership, The Un joined to suport S. Korea and the People's Republic of China (PRC) entered to aid N. Korea. The war left Korea divided and brought the Cold War to Asia. This was the first UN war and the first limited war, meaning not every possible means were used. The war is still going on and US still maintains troops in S. Korea. The factors that caused thsi war are still presently unresolved. The war transformed the US into a national security state. It also solidified the US role as a world police.

Cuban Revolution

1953-59 was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and its allies against the U.S. backed authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. The revolution began in July 1953 continued sporadically until the rebels finally ousted Batista on 1 January 1959, replacing his govt with revolutionary socialist state. The Cuban Revolution had powerful domestic and international repercussions. It reshaped Cuba's relationship with the United States, which still maintains a trade embargo against Cuba as of 2016.

Austrian State Treaty

1955 the reps of the govts of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the U.S. and France signed a treaty that granted Austria independence and arranged for the withrawal of all occupation forces. There was an agreement that the newly independent state of Austria would declare its neutrality, creating a buffer zone between East and the West.was the only treaty signed by both the Soviet Union and U.S. in the decade after the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties. IT also marked the only Cold War era withdrawal by the Soviet Union from a territory it occupied.

"Let one hundred flowers bloom" campaign

1956 Communist Party of China (CPC) encouraged its citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime. Differing views and solutions to national policy were encouraged based on the famous expression by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong; intellectuals imprisoned

Hungarian Revolution

1956 was a nationwide revolt against the govt of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soveit-imposed policies, lasting from 23 Oct until 10 Nov 1956. The revolt began as a student demonstration which then attracted thousands as they marched through central Budapest and the revolt spread quickly across Hungary and the government collapsed.

Second Berlin Crisis

1961 last major politico-military European incident of the Cold War about the occupational status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post-World War II Germany. The USSR provoked the Berlin Crisis with an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Western armed forces from West Berlin—culminating in the city's de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall.

Communist takeover of Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, Grenada

1975; spurred the Reagan Doctrine

Tiananmen Square

1989 troops with assault rifles and tanks killed at least several hundred democracy demonstrators trying to block the military's advance towards Tiananmen Square in china

Iranian hostage crisis

52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981 after a group of Iranian students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. It stands as the longest hostage crisis in recorded history

Two Camps doctrine (Zhdanov doctrine)

A Soviet cultural doctrine developed by Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov in 1946. It proposed that the world was divided into two camps: the "imperialistic", headed by the US; and "democratic", headed by the Sovet

Marshal Plan

A program of financial aid and other intiatives, sponsored by the US, designed to boost the economies of western European countries after WWII. It was originally advocated by Secretaryof State George C Marshall and passed by Congress in 1948. It was proposed by the US secretary of state, General George C Marshall.

Washington Naval Treaty

AKA 5 Power Treaty; 1922 treaty among the major nations that had won World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction signed by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories.

Night of the Long Knives

AKA Operation Hummingbird; June 30 - July 1934; Nazi regime carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate Hitler's absolute hold on power in Germany. Many of those killed were leaders of the SA

Massive Retaliation

AKA massive response or massive deterrence; is a military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack.

Alsace Lorraine

Annexed by the French Republic after WWI

Katyn Forest Massacre

April - May 1940; series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the NKVD. Though the killings took place at several different locations, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

Treaty of Rapallo

April 16, 1922: between Germany and Russia under which each renounced all territorial and financial claims against the other following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and World War I.The two governments also agreed to normalise their diplomatic relations and to "co-operate in a spirit of mutual goodwill in meeting the economic needs of both countries".

Bandung Conference

April 1955: first large scale Afro-Asian international conference; to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by any nation. The conference was an important step toward the Non-Aligned Movement.

London Naval Treaty

April 22, 1930; an agreement between the United Kingdom, the Empire of Japan, France, Italy and the United States, signed on 22 April 1930, which regulated submarine warfare and limited naval shipbuilding.

Wilson Declares war

April 6, 1917: U.S. declares War on Germany; joins the Allies in WWI

Entente Cordiale, Russia, France

April 8, 1904: Treaty between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the French Third Republic which saw a significant improvement in Anglo-French relations; gave Egypt to the UK and France to Morocco

Nagasaki

Aug 9 1945 this was the site fo the second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the Untied States resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender.

Founding of Pakistan

August 14, 1947, Pakistan declares independence from Britain

Independence of India

August 15, 1947; India declares independence from Britain

Battle of Britain

Battle that took place between Aug. and Oct. 1944. The capture of port facilities like Brest in Britanny was part of the Allied plan for the invasion of mainland Europe in order to ensure the timely delivery of the enomous amount of war materiel required to supply the invading Allied forces. After breaking out of the Normandy beach head in June 1944, Brittany was targeted because of its naval bases at Lorient, St. Nazaire and Brest. U-boats and surface raiders had used these bases, despite a bombing campaign by the RAF, and the Germans had launcehd 'Operation Cerberus' from Brest in 1942. The Americans were given the task of liberating Brittany.

Neville Chamberlain

British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. However, when Adolf Hitler later invaded Poland, the UK declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, and Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight months of World War II.

CENTO (Baghdad Pact)

Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), formerly Middle East Treaty Organization, or Baghdad Pact Organization, mutual securty orgnization dating from 1955 to 1979 and composed of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Until March 1959 the organziation was known as the Middle East Treaty Organization, included Iraq, and had its headquarters in Baghdad. The CENTO was intended to counter the threat of Soviet expansion into vital Middle East oil-producing regions. It was never effective. Iraq withdrew fromt he alliance in 1959 after its anti-Soviet monarchy was overthrown. That same year the US became an associate member, the name of the organization was changed to CENTO, and its headquarters was moved to Ankara. After the fall of the shah in 1979, Iran withdrew, and CETO was dissolved.

Chiang K'ai Shek

Chinese political and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975.

Winston Churchill named Prime Minister

Churchill became priminster during a time of immense crisis in May 1940. Churchill replaced Chamberlain and he choice to replace Chamberlain had rested between Churchill and Lord Halifax the Foreign Secretary. But Halifax thought that it would be hard to runt he country fromt eh House of Lords because a coalition government including key members of the Labour party was now to be formed. No other man had a real stomach for war. Chruchill became the most dominant figure in British politics- a role that received huge praise once the war was over. Churchill's stand against Nazism and all it stood for summarised why the war was being fought. His speeches have become part of legend- be it 'fighting on the beaches' or his salute to the men from Fighter Command who took on the Luftwaffee in the Battle of Britian: "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few"

German Democratic Republic

Commonly called East Germany was founded Oct. 7 1949 after WWII. It was formed from the parts of Germany occupied by the USSR including part of the city Berlin. The GDR was ruled by Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Most people say that it was a dictatorship.

Kaiser Wilhem (William II)

Crowned in 1888, he dismissed the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1890 and launched Germany on a bellicose "New Course" in foreign affairs that culminated in his support for Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914 that led in a matter of days to the First World War. An ineffective war-time leader, he lost the support of the army, abdicated in November 1918, and fled to exile in the Netherlands.

Fidel Castro

Cuban revolutionary and politician who governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008. Politically a Marxist-Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party socialist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

Cheka

December 1917: was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat turned communist. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels; a secret police that later merged with NKVD.

Locarno Conference and Treaties

December 1925: seven agreements negotiated at Locarno, Switzerland in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, and return normalizing relations with defeated Germany

Soviets invade Afghanistan

December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups known as the mujahideen fought against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

US declares pre-emptive war strategy

Different pundits have attributed different meanings to the Bush Doctrine. It was used to describe specific policy elements, including a strategy of "preemptive strikes" as a defense against an immediate threat to the security of the United States. This policy principle was applied particularly in the Middle East to counter international terrorist organizations.

Communist Takeovers in Chzechoslovakia, Poland,North Korea, etc.

During World War II the Soveit Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively ceded to it by Nazi Germany.

Democracy Wall

During the November 1978 to December 1979, thousands of people put up "big character poster" on a long brick wall of Xidan Street, Xicheng District of Beijing, to protest about the political and social issues of China. Under acquiescence of the Chinese government, other kinds of protest activities, such as unofficial journals, petitions, and demonstrations, were also soon spreading out in major cities of China. This movement can be seen as the beginning of the Chinese Democracy Movement.

Verdun

February - December 1916: Longest battle in WWI. Germany vs France; became known as the Western Front.

Warsaw Pact

Formally, the Treaty of Friendship Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, sometimes, informally WarPac, akin in format to NATO. A collective defense traty among Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. While the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO, there was no direct confrantation between them. The conflict was fougth on a ideological basis.

Cominform (Communist Information Bureau)

Founded in 1947 is the common name for what was offically referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties. It was created by Stalin for the purpose of exchanging info among the communist parties of Europe. It served two purposes: 1) to dolidify relationships amont the communist parties of Eastern Europe as tools of Soviet foreign policy; 2) to act as a device for dealing with Tito and the Communist Party of Yogoslavia.

Sudentland

German name used to refer to those northern, southern, and western areas of Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by ethnic German speakers, specifically the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Czech Silesia located within Czechoslovakia, since they were part of Austria until the end of World War I.

Joseph Goebbels

German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's close associates and most devoted followers, and was known for his skills in public speaking and his deep, virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.

Adolf Hitler

German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP), Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer ("Leader") of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust.

Death of Stalin

He died Mar 5 1953. His successor was named in 1956 as Nikita Krushchev. He addressed a "secret session" of the 20th Congress, where he spent three hours denouncing Stalin, thus beginning the process known as de-Stalinization. But the Soviet state he build survived for another forty years. The Cold War went on, Eastern Europe remained in thrall to the U.S.S.R ad the gulags still operated.

John Foster Dulles

He he served as U.S. Secretary of State under Republican Pres Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against Communism throughout the world. He negotiated numerous treaties and alliances that reflected this point of view. He advocated support of the French in their war agaisn the Viet Minh in Indochina but rejected the Geneva Accords that France and the Communists agreed to, and instead supported South Vietnam after the Geneva Conference in 1954.

Charles de Gaulle

He was a General and President of France and best known for freeing France during World War II. He rose to the rank of brigadier general. De Gaulle fled to Britain were he set up his own French government called Free France. He made sppeches on BBC radio urging the French people to resist the rule of the Germans. Meanwhile the French government that had surrendered to Germany called him a traitor and sentenced him to death for treason. On D-Day, the Allies invaded France. De Faulle's forces and the French Resistance played a part in the liberation.

Marshall Petain

He was a military and poltical leader and France's greatest hero in World War I (1914-1918). He was later condemned as a traitor for having headed the pro-German Vichy regime after France's defeat in World War II (1939-1945). Following the German invasion of France in 1940, Petain-then 84 years old-was recalled to active miliary service as adviser to the minister of war. He also succeded Paul Reynaud as premier of France and soon afterward he asked the Germans for an armistice. He would later stand trial for treason when he returned to France in 1944 and found guilty of working with the enemy and sentence death.

Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong)

He was the main Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's Cultural Revolution. He served as chairman of the PRC from 1949-1959. He ruled a quarter of the world's population for twenty five years and made China one of the msot powerful coutnries int he world. But behind the scenes he was responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese people. He launched the "Great Leap Forward" an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. The program est. large ag communes with as many as 75,000 people working the field.

OAS Charter

IS a Pan-Amerian treaty that sets out the creation of the OAS. It was signed at the Ninth International Conf of American States in 1948 and came into effect Dec 1951.

Conference, Founding of United Nations

In 1945 reps of 50 countries met in San Francisco at the United Nations Conf. on International Organization to draw up the UN.

Federal Repbulic of Germany

In 1949 Federal Republic of Germany is formally established. The action marked the effective end to any discussion of reuniting East and West Germany. After WWII Germany was divided into four occupation zones, with British, French,Americans, and Soviets each controlling one zone.

U-2 Incident

In 1960 U-2 incident happened during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khurshchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. The incident raised tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets during the Cold War (1945-91), the largely poltical clash between the two superpowers and their allies that emerged following World War II.

Cultural Revolution

In 1966, China's Communist leader Mao Zedong launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. Believing that current Communist leaders were taking the party, and China itself, in the wrong direction, Mao called on the nation's youth to purge the "impure" elements of Chinese society and revive the revolutionary spirit that had led to victory in the civil war 20 decades earlier and the formation of the People's Republic of China.

Battle of Stalingrad

In July 1942, The Nazi Army bombed the Soviet city of Stalingrad, launching one of the bloodiest battles in history. It was a majr battle on the Eastern Front of WWII in which Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. Considered to be the turning point in WWII in Europe. It bled the German army dry in Russia and after this defeat, the Germany Army was in full retreat. Why Stalingrad? It was an impt. target as it was Russia's centre of communicatiosn in the south as wella s being a centre for manufacturing.

China goes Communist

In October 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of People's Republic of China (PRC). This ended the costly-full scale civil war between the Chinese Communsit Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), which broke out immediately following WWII. The creation of the PRC also completed the long process of governmental upheaval in China begun by the Chinese Revolution 1911. The "fall" of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the U.S. to suspend diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades.

SEATO

In Sept. 1954, the U.S. France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Tailand and Pakistan formed the Southeast Asia Tretay Organization, or SEATO. The purpose of the org was to prevent communism from gaining ground in the region. Only two Southeast Asian coutnries became members. Most joined because of the interest int he region and the geographic positions.

June 1967 War (Six Day War)

Israel Vs Egypt; Israel captures Gaza strip and Sinai Penninsula

Lend Lease

It was formally titled "An Act to Promte the Defense of the Untied States. This was a program under which the Untied States supplied Free France, The United Kingdom, the Republic of China, and later the USSR and the other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945. THis included warships and warplanes, along with other weaponry.

Benito Mussolini

Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista; PNF), ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship. Founder of Italian fascism.

Eisenhower Doctrine

Jan 5, 1957, in the Cold War period after World War II, U.S. foreign-policy pronouncement by Pres. Eisenhower promising military or economic aid to any Middle Eastern country needing help in resisting communist agression. The doctrin was intended to check increased Soviet influence in the Middle East, which had resulted from the supply of arms to Egypt by communist countries as well as from strong communist support of Arab states against an Israeli, French, and British attack on Egypt in Oct 1956. The Doctrine represented no radical change in U.S. policy; the Truman Doctrine had pledged similar support to Greece and Turkey 10 years earlier. It was a continuation of the U.S. policy of containment of or resistance to any extension of the Soviet sphere of influence.

League of Nations

January 10, 1920: intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.

Hitler becomes chancellor

January 30, 1933, Hitler becomes chancellor

Fourteen Points

January 8, 1918: Wilson's speech to Congress outlined a policy of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination. It also called for a diplomatic end to the war, international disarmament, the withdrawal of the Central Powers from occupied territories, the creation of a Polish state, the redrawing of Europe's borders along ethnic lines, and the formation of a League of Nations

Potsdam Conference

July 17-Aug 2 1945-Allied conference of WWII held at Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. It included U.S. Pres Truman, Churchill and Stalin. Conference discussed the substance and procedures of the peace settlements in Europe but did not attempt to write peace treaties. The major issue was administration of defeated Germany, the demarcation of the boundaries of Poland, the occupation of Austria, teh definition of the Soviet Union's role in eastern Europe, the determination of reparations, adn the further prosecution of the war against Japan.

Berlin Blockade

June 24 1948-12 May 1949 was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. Durng multinational occupation of post-WWII Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. It was the first major international crses of the Cold War. It was an attempt by the Soviets to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the United States to travel to their sectros of Berlin.

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

June 28, 1914: kicked off WWI. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The assassins' motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia. The assassination led directly to the First World War when Austria-Hungary subsequently issued an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia, which was partially rejected. Austria-Hungary then declared war, triggering actions according to a series of international treaties leading to war between most European states.

Treaty of Versailles

June 29, 1919: brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers.

Battle of Midway

June 3-6, 1942, World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strenght and most of its best trained naval pilots. The battle ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.

Neutrality Act

Laws passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 to limit U.S. involvement in future wars. They were based on the widespread disillusionment with World War I in the early 1930s and the belief that the United States had been drawn into the war through loans and trade with the Allies.

Erich von Ludendorff

Leader (along with Paul von Hindenburg) of the German war efforts during World War I until his resignation in October 1918; drafted Germany's "Total War" theory

Senate Rejects Versailles Treaty

March 1920: In place of the Treaty of Versailles, in 1921 Congress passed a resolution, known as the Knox-Porter Resolution, to formally end the war with Germany. The United States would never join the League of Nations, which was just one of several problems the organization would have in building power and credibility.

Provisional Government (Russia)

March 2, 1917: established immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire

Remilitarization of the Rhineland

March 7, 1936; violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, marking the first time since the end of World War I that German troops had been in this region. The remilitarization changed the balance of power in Europe from France towards Germany, and made it possible for Germany to pursue a policy of aggression in Eastern Europe that the demilitarized status of the Rhineland had blocked until then.

Leon Trotsky

Marxist revolutionary and theorist, a Soviet politician who engineered the transfer of all political power to the Soviets with the October Revolution of 1917, and the founding leader of the Red Army.Trotsky's ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a major school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. Assasinated by NKVD.

Quemoy and Matsu

Matsure and Quemoy(Kinmen) island groups situated in the Taiwan Straight. During the First Taiwan Strait Crisis 1954-1955 was a armed conflict that took place between the govts of the PRC and the Republic of China (ROC). American news reports focused almost all on the Kinmen and Matsu islands which were the sites of frequent artillery duels. Pres Truman announced that the U.S. would not beccome involved in any dispute about Taiwan Strait and he would not intervene int he event of any attack by teh PRC. But after the outbreak of the Korean War Truman declared tht the "nutralization of the Straits fo Fromosa" was the best interest of the U.S., and he sent U>S. Navy's 7th fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent any conflict between PRC and the Republic of China, which effectively put Taiwan under Am. protection.

Fall of Indochina

May 7, 1954, the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam fell after a four month siege led by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French pulled out of the region.

Policy of Containment

Military strategy to stop the expansion of an emeny. Containment was passive. A component of the Cold War, ths policy was a response to a seres of moves by the Soveit Unon to enlare communist influence in Eastern Europe, Chna, Korea, Africa and Vietnam. It was first laid out by George Kennan in 1947 in the Foreign Affairs magzine

NSC-68

National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) was a 58-page top secret polcy paper by US NSC presented to Pres. Truman on April 14,1950. It was one of the most important statements of American Polcy in the Cold War. It provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s. It maid containment of global Communist expansion a high priority.

National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi)

Nazi party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany.The party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Org is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constiuttes a system of collective defence whereby its members states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. It is headquarted in Brussels Belgium. The Alliance consists of 28 independent members. Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luzembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.

Alger Hiss

Nov 11 1904-Nov 15 1996 was an American govt official who was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. He worked for the U.S. State Dept.

Armistice Day

November 11, 1918: armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.

Balfour Declaration

November 2 1917: letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Munich Putsch

November 8, 1923: failed coup attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler — along with Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders — to seize power in Munich, Bavaria. About two thousand men marched to the centre of Munich, where they confronted the police, which resulted in the death of 16 Nazis and four policemen. Hitler himself was wounded during the clash.

Wall Street Clash (Black Monday)

October 24, 1929: the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects.[2] The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries

Dual Alliance

October 7, 1879: The Dual Alliance was a defensive alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary, which was created by treaty as part of Bismarck's system of alliances to prevent/limit war. The two powers promised each other support in case of attack by Russia.

Tonkin Gulf Resolution

On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.

Pearl Harbor attack

On Dec. 7 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the US Naval Base Peal Harbor in Hawaii, using bombers, torpedo bombers and midget submarines. On Dec. 8, FDR delivered a speech also known as the "Infamy Speech" to the American citizens, informing them that this happened while the US was in the midst of talks to keep peace. That same day, America would enter World War II.

Collapse of Societ Empire

On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.

Founding of Israel

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the est. of the State of Israel. U.S. Pres. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day. U.S. supported the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which favored est. a Jewish national home in Palestine. The Arabs dd not agree to this new state. Inter-communal fighting had preceded the declaration and after it, five Arab armies invaded. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had fled or had been driven out.

Fall of Berlin Wall

On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders.

Suez Crisis

On October 29, 1956, Israel armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating the Suez Crisis. The Israelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union inot the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States. In the end, the British, French and Israeli govts withdrew their troops in late 1956 and early 1957

D-Day

On une 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower caleld the operation a crusade in which, "we wil accept nothing less than full victory."

Common Market/European Economic Communit/EU

Organization established (1958) by a treaty signed in 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany (now Germany); it was known informally as the Common Market. The EEC 1967 to form the European Community (EC; known since the ratification [1993] of the economic union of its member nations, ultimately leading to politial union. It worked for the free movement of labor and capital, aboltion of trusts and cartels, and the development of joint and reciprocal policies on labor, social welfare, agriculture, transport, and foreign trade

Germany attacks USSR (Operation Barbarossa)

Originally named Operation Fritz, during WWII, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. Hitler renamed it Operation Barbarossa after Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa who sought to est. German predominance in Europe. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war.

NKVD

Peaople's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. A ministry of the Soviet government responsible for secrutiy and law enforcement that was set up on 7 November 1917 and reorganized as the MVD on 19 March 1946. IT was closely associated with the Soviet secret polic, which at times was part of the agency, and is known for its political repression during the era of Joseph Stalin.The NKVD contained the regulat, public police force of the USSR, including traffic police, firefighting, border guards and archives. It is best known for the activities of the Gulag and the Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB), the predecessor of the KGB. The NKVD conducted mass extrajudicial executions, and a system of forced labor camps and suppressed underground resistance and was responsible for mass deportations of entire nationalities and Kulaks to unpopulated regions of coutnry.

Georges Clemenceau

Prime Minister of France during and after WWI. In favour of a total victory over the German Empire, he militated for the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France. He was one of the principal architects of the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919; championof German reparations.

David Lloyd George

Prime Minister of UK during and after WWI; he redrew the map of Europe at the peace conference and partitioned Ireland

NATO expansion

Process of including new member states in NATO. NATO is a military alliance of twenty-six European and two North American countries that constitutes a system of collective defense.

Vladimir Lenin

Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism.

Japanese occupation of Manchuria

September 18, 1931: he Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria immediately following the Mukden Incident, a staged event engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the Japanese invasion in 1931

Munich Conference and Agreement

September 30, 1938; permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined.

Open Door Policy:

September 6, 1899: policy proposed to keep China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, keeping any one power from total control of the country, and calling upon all powers, within their spheres of influence, to refrain from interfering with any treaty port or any vested interest, to permit Chinese authorities to collect tariffs on an equal basis, and to show no favors to their own nationals in the matter of harbour dues or railroad charges.

First Battle of the Marne

September 7-12, 1914: WWI battle resulting in Allied victory. Set the prescendant for Trench warfare.

Nelson Mandela

South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation.

Gulag Archipelago

Soviet forced labor camp. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, gave the term its international repute with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The author likened the scattered camps to "a chain of islands" and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death

Laurenti Beria

Soviet politician of Georgian ethnicity, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II

SALT

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement signed on May 26, 1972. SALT I froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels and provided for the addition of new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers only after the same number of older intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and SLBM launchers had been dismantled.

ANZUS

The Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty, was an agreement signed in 1951 to prtoect the security of the Pacific from the Japanese. Although the agreement has not been formally abolished the U.S.and New Zealand no longer maintain the security relationship between their countries.

Iwo Jima

The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 Feb-26 March 1945 was a mjor battle in which the U.S. Marines landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima during WWII. It stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast.

COMECON

The Comecon was the Eastern Bloc's reply to the formation of the Organization for European Economic Co-Operation in Western Europe. The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organziation, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs.

KGB

The Committee for State Security, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. It was a military body and was overseen by army laws and regulations. It's main functions were foreign intel, counterintel, operative-investigatory activities, guarding the State Border of the USSR, and guarding the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government.

People's Republic of China

The PRC established in 1949 is a one party state in East Asia governed by the Communist Party of China. Overtime Marxist ideas grew popular and the Communisty party was formed

Sputnik

The Soviet Union inaugurates the "Space Age" with its launch of Sputnik, the world's first artifical satellite. The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the Russian word for "satellite," was launched at 10:29pm Moscow time.

Dien Bien Phu

The battle was a decisive engagement in the first Indochina War (1946-1954). After French forces occupied the Dien Bien Phu valley in late 1953, Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap ammased troops and palced heavy artillery in caves of the mountains overlooking the French camp. It was significant turing point in Indochina which ended in a French surrender and it lead to the end of French colonialization in Indochina.

Hiroshima

The best known as the first city in history to be targeted by a nuclear weapon when the United Stats Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped an atomic bomb on the city near the end of WWII.

Geneva Conference and the division of Vietnam

The conf. took place in Geneva Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle outstanding issues in the Korean peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina(refers to Southeast Asia). Participants included the Soviet Union, U.S., France, UK, and the PRC. The conf. produced a set of docs known as the Geneva Accords. These agreements temporarily separated Vietnam into two zones, a northern zone to be governed by the Viet Minh, and a souther zone to be governed by the State of Vietnam. A final declaration was issued by the British chairman which called for general elections. The document was not acepted by the delegates of either the State of Vietnam or the U.S.

Kim Il Sung

The military-oriented premier and president of N. Korea from shortly after WWII until his death in 1994. He led guerrilla forces against the Japanese imperial army until he was foreced to flee Korea in the late 1930s. He was the leader of South Korea during the Korean war.

Petrograd Soviet

The soviet was established in March 1917 after the February Revolution as a representative body of the city's workers and soldiers, while the city already had its well established city council, the Saint Petersburg City Duma (Central Duma). During the revolutionary days, the council tried to extend its jurisdiction nationwide as a rival power center to the Provisional Government, creating what in the Soviet historiography is known as the Dvoyevlastiye (Dual power). Its committees were key components during the Russian Revolution and some of them led the armed revolt of the October Revolution.

Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech at 20th Party Congress

The speech took place Feb 25, 1956. It was the denunciation of the deceased Soviet leader Stalin made by Nikita Khrushchev to a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The speech was the nucleus of a far-reaching de-Stalinization campaign intended to destroy the image of the late dictator as an infalliable leader and to revert official policy to an idealized Leninist model. In his speech, Khrushchev called Lenin's Testament, a long-supressed document in which Lenin had warned that Stalin was likely to abuse his power, and then he cited numerous instances of such excesses. For example Stalin's use mass terror in the Great Purge of the mid-1930s, during which, according to Khrushchev, innocent communists had been falsely accused of espionage and sabotage and unjustly punished, often executed after they had been tortured into making confessions. He condemned Stalin for irrationally deporting entire nationality groups from their homelands during hte war and, after the war, for purging major political leaders in Leningrad (1948-50)

Quisling

The term means a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country. The word originates from the Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Wuisling, who headed a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime during the Second World War. The term was used by Prime Minister Winston Churchill during an address to the ALlied Delegats at St. James's Palace. In the US it was used often in Warner Bros. filme Edge of Darkness in reference to a traitorou villager and in the Warner Bros cartoon Tom Turk and Daffy and also in Peanuts cartoon. The contemporary usage, quisling is synonymous iwth traitor and applies particularly to politicians who appear to favour the interests of other nations or cultures over their own.

Four Freedoms

These were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. He proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" out to enjoy: Freedom of speech, Freedom of worship, Freedom from want, and Freedom from fear. Roosevelt delivered this speech before the United States declared war on Japan.

Dunkirk

This was an important battle that took place in Dunkirk, France during WWII between the Allies and Germany. IT was the defence and evacuation of British and allied forces in Europe from 26 May-June 1940. British forces who were in France got backed up at the port of Dunkirk. Faced with having a large number of their soliders either killed or caputred, the English got a huge armada of boats to risk crossing the English Channel to rescue the soldiers. They saved over 100,000 soldiers.

Vichy Government

This was the government of France after Germany defeated and occupied it at the beginning of Worl War II; Vichy, the capital, is a small city in central France. The Vichy goernment was essentially a puppet of the Germans

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

To end Russia's participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918.

Ngo Dinh Diem

Vietnamese political leader who served as pres, with dictatorial powers, of what was then South Vietnam, from 1955 until his assassination.He was backed by the U.S. and assisted the U.S. military and economic aid. He was Catholic when his coutnry was mostly Buddhist who made him unacceptable in their eyes. He imprisoned and killed many who opposed his regime which further alienated the South Vietnamese populace.

Yalta Conference

WWII (Feb 4-11,1945), major conference of the thre chief Allied leaders, Pres. FDR of the US, Great Britian's Prime Minister Churchill and Stalin of the Soviet Union, which met at Yalta in Crimea to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany. It was decided here that Germany would be divided into occupied zones administered by U.S. British French, and Soviet forcs.

Andrei Gromyko

Was a Soviet foreign minister (1957-85) and president (1985-88) of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He never really strongly identified with any partiuclar policy or political faction, he served dependably as a skilled emissary and spokesman. In 1943 he became ambassador to the US (at the young age of 34) and in 1946 became a representative to the UN Security Council. As foreign minister his exact influence in policy making is unclear. He became renowned for his extensive knowledge of international affairs and for his negotiating skills, and he was entrusted with major diplomatic missions and policy statements. He became a member of the Politburo in 1973 and was named a first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1983.

Atlantic Charter

Was a joint declaration released by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941 following a meeting of the two heads of state Newfoundland. In early in World War II, defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. The U.K. and the U.S. drafted the work and the Allies of WWII later confirmed it. The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people, self-determination; restoration of self-government to thsoe deprived of it etc... The Atlantic Charter set goals for the post-war world and inspired many of the international agreements that shaped the world thereafter.

Brezhnev Doctrine

When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

Iron Curtain Speech

Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address of 5 March 1946, at Westminister College, used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Easter Europe: The Iron Curtain as described by Churchill at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. It described the division between Western powers and the area controlled by the Soviet Union.

Cuban Missile Crisis

a 13-day (October 16-28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation, elements of which were televised, is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war

Solidarity movement

a Polish trade union that was founded on 17 September 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa.[1] It was the first trade union in a Warsaw Pact country that was not controlled by a communist party.

Soviet invasion of Poland

a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939. On that morning, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. The invasion and battle lasted for the following 20 days and ended on 6 October 1939 with the two-way division and annexation of the entire territory

Flexible Response

a defense strategy implemented by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to address the Kennedy administration's skepticism of Dwight Eisenhower's New Look and its policy of massive retaliation. Flexible response calls for mutual deterrence at strategic, tactical, and conventional levels, giving the United States the capability to respond to aggression across the spectrum of warfare, not limited only to nuclear arms.

Blitzkrieg

a method of warfare whereby an attacking force, spearheaded by a dense concentration of armoured and motorised or mechanised infantry formations with close air support, breaks through the opponent's line of defence by short, fast, powerful attacks and then dislocates the defenders, using speed and surprise to encircle them

Soviet-Finnish War

a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939-1940. It began with the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 (three months after the outbreak of World War II), and ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. The Soviet Union ostensibly sought to claim parts of Finnish territory, demanding—amongst other concessions—that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security reasons, primarily the protection of Leningrad, which was only 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border.

SDI

a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). The system, which was to combine ground-based units and orbital deployment platforms, was first publicly announced by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983

Yom Kippur War

also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, was a war fought by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel from October 6 to 25, 1973. The fighting mostly took place in the Sinai and the Golan Heights, territories that had been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wanted also to reopen the Suez Canal. Neither specifically planned to destroy Israel, although the Israeli leaders could not be sure of that

Great Leap Forward

an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1958 to 1962. The campaign was led by Chairman Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, it is widely considered to have caused the Great Chinese Famine.

Third International (Comintern)

an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State. Dissolved by Stalin in 1943

International Monetary Fund

an international org HQ in DC of 188 countries working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. Formed in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conf.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament

Teheran Conference

codenamed Eureka was a srategymeeting of Joseph Stalin, FDR, and Winston Churchill from 28 Nov. to 1 Dec 1943 during WWII. The discussion centred on the opening of a "second front" in western Europe. Though military questions were dominant, the conference saw more discussion of poltical issues than had occured in any previous meeting between Allied govt heads.

Shanghai Communique

diplomatic document issued by the United States of America and the People's Republic of China on February 28, 1972 during President Richard Nixon's visit to China. The document pledged that it was in the interest of all nations for the United States and China to work towards the normalization of their relations, although this would not occur until the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations seven years later.

Détente

easing of the geo-political tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States which began in 1969, as a foreign policy of U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford called détente; a "thawing out" or "un-freezing" at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War.

Mikhail Gorbachev

eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, when the party was dissolved. He was the country's head of state from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991

Collectivism

emphasizes the group and its interests. Collectivism is the opposite of individualism. Collectivists focus on communal, societal, or national interests in various types of political, economic and educational systems.

Taiwan Relations Act

enacted April 10, 1979; an act of the United States Congress. Since the recognition of the People's Republic of China, the Act has defined the substantial but non-diplomatic relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan.

Feliks Dzerzhinky

establishing and developing the Soviet secret police force Cheka, serving as their director from 1917 to 1926.

Helsinki Accords (CSCE)

final act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Finlandia Hall of Helsinki, Finland, during July and August 1, 1975. Thirty-five states, including the USA, Canada, and all European states except Albania and Andorra, signed the declaration in an attempt to improve relations between the Communist bloc and the West. The Helsinki Accords, however, were not binding as they did not have treaty status

Sun Yat-sen

foremost pioneer of the Republic of China, Sun is referred to as the "Father of the Nation" in the Republic of China (ROC), Hong Kong, Macau and the "forerunner of democratic revolution" in People's Republic of China (PRC). Sun played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the years leading up to the Xinhai Revolution. He was appointed to serve as Provisional President of the Republic of China when it was founded in 1912. He later co-founded the Nationalist Party of China, serving as its first leader

Weimar Republic

historical designation for the German state between 1919 and 1933. The name derives from the city of Weimar, where its constitutional assembly first took place.

Popular Front

in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election.

Alliance for Progress

initiated by U.S. Pres Kennedy in 1961 aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. It was designed to improve U.S. relations with Latin America which had been severely dmaged in recent years. And there was a growing fear of increased Soviet and Cuban influence in Lt. Am. It was in essence a Marshall Plan for Latin Am. It was later dissolved in 1973 by OAS as it failed in implementing what it set out to do such as massive land reforms.

Kuomintang

is a major political party in the Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan. It is currently the second-largest in the country.

International Bank for Reconstruction & Deveopment (World Bank)

is an international financial inst. That offers loans to middle-income developing countries. It is the first of five member insts that compose the World Bank Group.

Truman Doctrine

issued by President Truman in 1947 and stated the US would go to whatever lengths possible to contain the spread of communism. Kennan's policy paper on containment became the basis of the Truman Doctrine.

Tet Offensive

largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name of the offensive comes from the Tết holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, when the first major attacks took place

Joseph Stalin

leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state.

Nkrumah

led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957 and served as its first prime minister and president.

Nixon Doctrine

meant that each ally nation was in charge of its own security in general, but the United States would act as a nuclear umbrella when requested. The Doctrine argued for the pursuit of peace through a partnership with American allies. The Nixon Doctrine implied the intentions of Nixon shifting the direction on international policies in Asia

Annexation of Baltic States

military occupation of the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—by the Soviet Union under the auspices of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 14 June 1940 followed by their incorporation into the USSR as constituent republics, unrecognised internationally by most countries. On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the USSR and within weeks occupied the Baltic territories. In July 1941, the Baltic territory was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland of the Third Reich. As a result of the Baltic Offensive of 1944, the Soviet Union recaptured most of the Baltic states and trapped the remaining German forces in the Courland pocket until their formal surrender in May 1945. The Soviet "annexation occupation" of the Baltic states lasted until August 1991, when the Baltic states regained independence.

Point Four

military strategy to stop the expansion of an emeny. Containment was passive. A component of the Cold War, ths policy was a response to a seres of moves by the Soveit Unon to enlare communist influence in Eastern Europe, Chna, Korea, Africa and Vietnam.

Khamer Rogue

name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia. It was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the Vietnam People's Army from North Vietnam, and allied with North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and the Pathet Lao during the Vietnam War against the anti-communist forces from 1968 to 1975. Organized Cambodian genocide.

Maginot Line

named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles, and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany. Constructed on the French side of its borders with Switzerland, Germany, and Luxembourg, the line did not extend to the English Channel because the French military did not want to offend neutral Belgium.

Prague Spring

period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and continued until 21 August when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country to halt the reforms.

Appeasement

political context is a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an enemy power in order to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British Prime Ministers Ramsay Macdonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Hitler and Fascist Italy between 1935 and 1939.

UN Resolution 242

refers to the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in the area can live in security."

Missle gap/bomber gap

refers to the fear of Soviet superiority in the area of intercontinental bombers, which first arose in July 1957 after Soviets flew their Bear and Bison bombers past American obervers multiple times, duping them into exaggerating Soviet capability.

Lech Walesa

retired Polish politician and labor activist. He co-founded and headed Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995

Facism

romoted a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee syndicates are linked together in associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy. This economic system intended to resolve class conflict through collaboration between the classes.

Pope John Paul II

second longest serving pope in history; traveled to many countriees and involved in peace negotiations

Anschluss

term used to describe the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938.

Reza Shah Pahlavi

the Shah of Iran (Persia) from 15 December 1925 until he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran on 16 September 1941

Reagan Doctrine

the United States provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to "roll back" Soviet-backed communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to diminish Soviet influence in these regions as part of the administration's overall strategy to end the Cold War.

Boris Yeltsin

the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. During the late 1980s, Yeltsin had been a member of the Politburo, and in late 1987 tendered a letter of resignation in protest. No one had resigned from the Politburo before. This act branded Yeltsin as a rebel and led to his rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure.

Frencicso Franco

was a Spanish general who ruled over Spain as a dictator for 36 years from 1939 until his death. He restored the monarchy before his death, which made King Juan Carlos I his successor, who led the Spanish transition to democracy. After a referendum, a new constitution was adopted, which transformed Spain into a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy.

Julius Nyerere

was a Tanzanian statesman who served as the leader of Tanzania, and previously Tanganyika, from 1960 until his retirement in 1985.

Ho Chi Minh (his 21st alias)

was a Vietnamese Communist revolutionary leader who was prime miniser (1945-55) and later Pres till 1969 of the Dem Rep of Vietnam (North Vietnam). He was the key figure in the N. Vietnam founding and led the independence movement in 1941 and defeating the French Union at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

START

was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994

Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia

was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by four Warsaw Pact nations - the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland - on the night of 20-21 August 1968. Although East German forces were prepared to participate in the invasion as well, they were ordered from Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border just hours before the invasion. Stopped Prague Spring.

Warsaw Uprising

was a mjor WWII operation by the Polish resistance Home Army to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany

Manchukuo

was a puppet state in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, which was governed under a form of constitutional monarchy.

Gen Douglas MacArthur

was an American general who commanded te Southwest Pacific in WWII, administered postwar Jpan during the Allied occupation that followed, and led United Nations forces during the first nine months of the Korean War.

Dumbarton Oaks Conference, San Francisco

was an international conference at which the United Nations was formulated and negotiated among international leaders. It was the first impt step taken to carry out paragraph 4 of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which recognized the need for a postwar international organization to succeed the League of Nations. The participants inlcuded Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere

was an propaganda concept created and promulgated for occupied Asian populations during the first third of the government and military of the Empire of Japan. It promoted the cultural and economic nity of Northeast Asians, Southeast Asians, and Oceanians. It declared the intention to create a self-sufficient "block of Asian nations led by Japanese and free of Wesern powers." It was announced in a radio address entitled "The International Situation and Japan's Postion"

Harry Hopkins

was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers and a speechwriters. He was an architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Admin. (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country.

Manhattan Project

was research and development project that produced the first nuclear weapons during WWII. IT was led by the Untied States with the support of the Untied Kindgom and Canada.

Bretton Woods

was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the ount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, US to regualte the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of WWII. Held from July 1-22, 1944. This est. the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Red Guards

were a fanatic student mass paramilitary social movement mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution

Nuremberg Trials

were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany with the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.

Lao Gai

which means "reform through labor", is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of penal labour and prison farms in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Laogai is different from laojiao, or re-education through labor, which was an administrative detention system for people who were not criminals but had committed minor offenses, and was intended to reform offenders into law-abiding citizens.