The document summarizes major events in world history from 1945 to 1962 related to the end of World War 2 and rise of the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union. It describes the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 and USSR invading Manchuria, leading to Japan's surrender. It then outlines the political ideologies that emerged like liberalism, conservatism, fascism, socialism, communism and their key attributes. Major postwar conferences and the division of Germany and Korea are also summarized.
9. Aug. 1945: US used atomic bombs (A-bomb) on Japan; USSR invaded Japanese-
occupied Manchuria; Japan surrendered
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18. Totalitarian Democratic Totalitarian
The Political Spectrum Post-World War I
Liberalism
• Late 1700s in
American and
French
Revolutions
• Civil liberties –
freedom of
expression
• Limited
government by
constitution
• Legal equality of
all social classes
• Benefited middle
class most
• Multi-party
democracy – US,
France, Britain
Conservatism
• Authoritarian
traditional social
order
• Dominance of
upper class social
elites – nobles,
church officials,
moneyed interests
• Maintain military
rule by kings or
dictators
• Pre-WWI:
Germany, Austria-
Hungary, Russia,
Ottoman Empire
Fascism
• 1920s
• Replace
militaristic king w/
militaristic dictator
• Totalitarian state
by one-party
dictatorship
• Ultra-nationalist
• Anti-communist
• Social Darwinian
expansion
• Italy (1922)
Nazism
• Racial superiority
• Germany (1933)
Socialism
• Mid-1800s in
Industrial
Revolution
• Legal and
economic equality
• Benefited lower
working
class/proletariat
• Government
ownership of
means of
production –
factories, mines,
power,
transportation,
communication
• Legal reform and
labor union
activism
Communism
• Mid-1800s
• Complete
economic equality
to create
classless system
• Anti-bourgeoisie
• Government
ownership of
means of
production –
factories, mines,
power,
transportation,
communication
• Totalitarian state
by one-party
dictatorship
• USSR (1917)
19. Feb. 1945: Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt met at Yalta Conference in USSR to
discuss post-war plans
20.
21. 1945: Soviets took Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Albania, and East Germany in WWII.
22. 1945-9: 15 million people fled west while USSR
plundered $14 billion of industrial materials and
established communist satellite states.
23. July 1945: Truman, Churchill/Atlee, and Stalin met in Potsdam Conference in
Germany. Truman objected to pro-Soviet governments installed in Eastern
Europe without free elections
24. Germany divided into four occupation zones; USSR occupied Eastern Europe and
East Germany
29. 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• All human beings are born free and equal
• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and
security; no one shall be held in slavery or
servitude or subjected to torture, arbitrary
arrest, detention or exile
• Freedom of movement, thought, conscience
and religion, opinion and expression,
peaceful assembly and association
• Right to take part in the government through
free elections by universal suffrage
• Right to an adequate standard of living and
education
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34. 1948 UN Genocide Convention
Genocide is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group by:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
35.
36. Sept. 1945: Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam to
be an independent state; Korea divided at the
38th Parallel into an American-backed South
and Soviet-backed North
37. Feb. 1946: American diplomat in Moscow George Kennan
released the “Long Telegram” warning that the USSR
viewed peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West as
impossible
38. Mar. 1946: Churchill declared that an
“Iron Curtain” had descended across Europe
39. March 1947: Truman Doctrine gave US aid to fight communist expansion in
Greece and Turkey pursuing a policy of containment.
40.
41. June 1948: US began Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe; Berlin Airlift
bypassed communist blockade
42. June 1948: US began Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe; Berlin Airlift
bypassed communist blockade
61. Oct. 1949: Mao Zedong captured Beijing and established communist People’s
Republic of China
62. Feb. 1950: Red Scare in US led by Senator Joseph McCarthy
63. June 1950: Korean War began; United Nations defended South Korea from a
communist North Korean invasion led by Kim Il Sung backed by China and USSR.
65. July 1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for selling atomic secrets to the
Soviet Union; Korean War ended in armistice with pre-war 38th Parallel border
restored with demilitarized zone (DMZ)
76. Apr. 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became first man to orbit Earth;
US CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba failed
77. May 1961: John F. Kennedy committed US to moonshot – to put a man on the
Moon by the end of the decade
78. Aug. 1961: Berlin Wall erected to stop flood of 3.5 million refugees defecting
from the communist East to the free West
79. Sept. 1961: India, Indonesia, Egypt, Ghana, and Yugoslavia began the
Non-Aligned Movement to preserve Cold War neutrality in the Third World
80. Feb. 1962: John Glenn became first American astronaut to orbit Earth
81. Oct. 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis; US pursued brinksmanship diplomacy and
quarantined Cuba with a naval blockade in response to placement of Soviet
nuclear missiles in Cuba. World War III was narrowly averted.