Ch 17 - Restructuring the Postwar World

• The United States was upset that Joseph Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. Later, Stalin blamed the Allies for not invading German occupied Europe earlier than 1944.
• Yalta Conference - The US, Britain, and Soviet Union met and agreed to divide Germany into zones of occupation, Germany would have to pay the Soviet Union for the war. In return, Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan and promised that Eastern Europeans under his control would have free elections
• A skeptical Winston Churchill predicted that Stalin would keep his pledge only if the Eastern Europeans followed “a policy friendly to Russia.”
• The United States and the Soviet Union temporarily set aside their differences when they joined the United Nations.
• United Nations - an international organization of 48 countries intended to protect the members against aggression
• General Assembly - each UN member nation could cast its vote on a broad range of issues
• Security Council - An 11-member body called that had the real power to investigate and settle disputes. Its five permanent members were Britain, China, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
• The Soviet Union had at least 50 times as many fatalities as the US. One in four Soviets was wounded or killed
• As World War II drew to a close, the Soviet troops pushed the Nazis back across Eastern Europe. These Soviet troops occupied a strip of countries along the Soviet Union’s own western border. Stalin regarded these countries as a necessary buffer, or wall of protection.
• Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met at Potsdam, Germany where Truman pressed Stalin to permit free elections in Eastern Europe. Stalin refused and declared that communism and capitalism could not exist in the same world.
• The Soviets controlled the eastern part of Germany under a Communist government and was named the German Democratic Republic. The western zones became the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949
• Iron curtain - came to represent Europe’s division into mostly democratic Western Europe and Communist Eastern Europe.
• Containment - The policy adopted by the US to block Soviet influence and stop the expansion of communism
• Truman Doctrine - Truman’s support for countries that rejected communism
• Marshal Plan - assistance program where the US provided 12.5 billion dollars to rebuild Western Europe. It was a great success
• The Communists seizing power in Czechoslovakia convinced congress in the US to approve the Marshal plan
• The Soviets wanted to keep Germany weak and divided and they held West Berlin hostage while the US, Britain, and France withdraw their forces from Germany and allow their occupation zones to form one nation
• While the Soviets held West Berlin hostage, the US and Britain flew flew food and supplies into West Berlin for nearly 11 months until the Berlin blockade was lifted.
• Cold War - a struggle over political differences carried on by means short of military action or war
• NATO - In 1949, ten western European nations joined with the United States and Canada to form a defensive military alliance in response to the Berlin blockade by the Soviet Union
• Warsaw Pact - was made in response to the formation of NATO. It included the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania
• Not every country joined NATO or Warsaw. Some, like India, chose not to align with either side. And China, the largest Communist country, came to distrust the Soviet Union. It remained nonaligned.
• Brinkmanship - The willingness to go to the brink or edge of war and requires a reliable source of nuclear weapons and airplanes to deliver them
• Thanks to their efforts to promote literacy and improve food production, Mao Zedong and the Communists won the peasants loyalty and by 1945, they controlled much of northern China
• The Nationalist forces under Jiang Jieshi dominated southwestern China. Jiang’s army actually fought few battles against the Japanese. Instead, the Nationalist army saved its strength for the coming battle against Mao’s Red Army. After Japan surrendered, the Nationalists and Communists resumed fighting
• Even though the US supported the Nationalists, thousands of Nationalist soldiers deserted to the Communists so Mao Zedong and the Communists were able to take control of China and Jiang and other Nationalist leaders retreated to the island of Taiwan, which Westerners called Formosa
• Many people in the United States viewed the takeover of China as another step in a Communist campaign to conquer the world
• China had split into two nations. One was the island of Taiwan, or Nationalist China. The other was the mainland, or People’s Republic of China.
• When Soviet forces occupied the northern half of Korea after World War II and set up a Communist government, the United States just supported a separate state in the south.
• When China took control of Tibet they promised autonomy to Tibetans, who followed their religious leader, the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama fled to India, who welcomed Tibetan refugees
• Under the Agrarian Reform Law - Mao seized the farmland that was controlled by a few landlords. His forces killed more than a million landlords who resisted. He then divided the land among the peasants and forced them to join collective farms
• communes - large collective farms where a group of people lived and shared common resources while earning nothing and working purely for the government
• Red Guards - young high schoolers and college students influenced by Mao Zedong to drop out to form militia units
• Cultural Revolution - major uprising led by mao Zedong and the red Guard to establish an equal society. Intellectual and artistic activity was considered dangerous and Intellectuals had to “purify” themselves by doing hard labor in remote villages
• Two full scale wars were fought during the cold war - in Korea and in Vietnam.
• Truman's policy of containment was put to the test when the Soviets and North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950
• The soviet union was absent and had refused to take part in the Security Council to protest admission of Nationalist China into the UN so they could not veto the UN’s plan to send an international force to Korea to stop the invasion on South Korea
• Douglas MacArthur - was in charge of the troops that attacked the north koreans during their invasion of South Korea. He called for a nuclear attack against China and was removed from his position by Truman.
• South Korea prospered after the Korean War thanks to aid from the United States and other countries
• Nationalist independence movements had begun to develop in France when young Vietnamese nationalist, Ho Chi Minh, turned to the Communists Party and led revolts against the French