The document outlines the three worlds that emerged after World War 2 - the First World led by the US, the Second World led by the Soviet Union, and the Third World of newly independent nations. It describes the economic recovery in the First World contrasted with poverty and McCarthyism. The Second World emphasized rapid industrialization but suppressed dissent. Revolutions occurred in the Third World seeking autonomy amid debt and superpower influence. Tensions arose from civil rights movements in the First World and resistance to Soviet control in Eastern Europe. Decolonization resulted in a three world global order replacing European dominance.

1. THE THREE WORLDS
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart
Pages 769-783
WTWA: Companion Reader, pp. 350-354
Amanda Abrams and Qiaxian Johnson

2. THE FIRST WORLD
• United States influenced
• In early 1950’s, this was Western Europe, North America, and later
Japan.
– Liberal Modernism – organize world on basis of capitalism and
democracy
• Sometimes allied with 3rd world dictators to combat communism

3. POSITIVE EFFECT Negative Effect
• The post-war period was
marked by economies of • Fear of communism
recovery and prosperity – Atomic weapons
thanks to U.S. investment in – McCarthyism in the US
Europe and Japan. – Spread of communism in Asia
– Nearly ¼ of citizens lived in
poverty
• U.S. high prosperity following
the war • Western Europe – Cold
War slowed efforts to
– Homeownership more common punish Fascists, Nazis, and
collaborators
– Suburban development
– Fear complete de-
– High birth rates
Nazification would leave
Germany weak and
– Civil rights movements susceptible to
communism
• NAACP

4. THE SECOND WORLD
• Soviet Union influenced
– Determined to insulate itself from future aggression from the
west, created buffer states.
• Eastern and central Europe, Mongolia, and North Korea.

5. SECOND WORLD (CONT.)
Pro Con
• Rapid industrialization • The Stalinist Soviet system
• state management of the suppressed dissent and
anyone it considered
economy with a cradle-to- dangerous to the state
grave comprehensive welfare – returning POWs were sent to
system camps after being released from
German camps because they had
• Soviet science gained had too much contact with
foreigners
worldwide acclaim, especially – Security police massacred strikers
after the launching of Sputnik in Poland
in 1957

6. THE THIRD WORLD
• Term coined by French intellectuals
– “third estate” – represented majority of population but was
oppressed
• 1960’s large bloc of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
– All recently decolonized and create more just societies than First
and Second worlds.
• Stronger democracy than 1st and rapid development like the
2nd

7. THIRD WORLD
DRAWBACKS
• impeded by the multi-national corporations and by the
financial system (IMF and World Bank)
• US and USSR opposed Third World neutrality and
impeded Third World autonomy
• Both superpowers sought “client states,” and
contributed to the militarization of the Third World
• many new countries had become debtor states, ruled
by corrupt regimes supported by one of the
superpowers

8. THIRD WORLD
REVOLUTIONS
• Mao Zedong – 1958, introduced Great Leap Forward
(unsuccessful)
– 1966 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
• Rid country of old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas
– “Lost Generation” sent to country side to reeducate
• In Guatemala, the CIA toppled the progressive government
of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954
• in Cuba, Fidel Castro launched a successful guerilla war
against the US-backed Batista regime in the late 1950s
• Che Guevara (1928-1967), Marxist revolutionary and
champion of the Cuban Revolution and Third World

9. POST WAR TENSIONS: FIRST WORLD
• Civil Rights Movements
• African American Civil Rights, NAACP
• Integration, racial tensions cause riots
• feminism: March in NYC 1970
• Friedan, women more independent, work oriented rather than family oriented, sexual
revolution and birth control
• Anti-War Movements
• Kent State Shooting: Anti-Vietnam
• lead to heightened non-violent civil disobedience, along with Ghandi and MLK, Jr.

10. POST WAR TENSIONS: SECOND WORLD/
COMMUNISM
• Soviet Union Control
• Buffer countries were against such a strong-hold of communist
control
• Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia
• Prague Spring of 1968: political reforms to try to loosen
control -> caused tensions between USSR and satellites
• USSR response: give limited political freedom in exchange for
loyalty

11. RESULTS
• Decolonization was now complete
• Three World Order replaced old European dominance
• US and USSR now superpowers, not Europe
• “nation-states” now form of organizing, not empires
• states given more power because they were no longer under
control of a “mother-country”