w. 9 - Cold War

w. 9

From now until you go to Berlin we'll be working with the Cold War. For those of you who want to do well with this unit, mastery of the historical material will help enormously. As I noted in class, the following sections of the book should be read and studied. Remember that you may need to look up words and search further on certain topics -- or ask questions in class -- to help you gain a firm grasp of the material.

Chapter 33 (Restructing the Postwar World):
Section 1: "Cold War: Superpowers Face Off"
Section 4: "The Cold War Divides the World" (pp. 988-989)

To help you with the Russion Revolution as well as the Soviet Union, look at Chapter 30
Section One: "Revolutions in Russia"
Section Two: "Totalitarianism"

And to help you with the ideologies of socialism and Marxism and capitalism, look at Chapter 25, Section 4: "Reforming the Industrial World."

There are very good graphics and summaries in these chapters that can help you, but a graphic can't get you fully to an understanding of material by itself. You need to read and see if you understand the ideas and connections being laid out.

Below I've pasted in many of the graphics from the book. But first, here's little timeline thing to help explain centuries again. I know that for some people, this is still a rather confusing concept, so I hope this can help some:

In class before break (w. 7), here are some of the things we covered:

End of World War II:

We talked about the Allies of WWII (U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, plus France), and we noted that a mutual desire to defeat Nazi Germany brought the Soviet Union together with the U.S., GB, and France -- not ideology. And once WWII was over, the political and economic ideological differences would make it harder and harder for these two sides to cooperate.

As a part of talking about WWII and trying to understand the Soviet Union, we discussed the 1939 Non-agression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. Even though this was a secret pact, I have been able to find, with a bit of sleuthing, a photo taken of this historic event. ;-)

I read the beginning paragraphs of the book Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe to try and paint a picture of the state of Europe at end of World War II. This complete breakdown of society in so many places and the enormous need to rebuild in so many ways is key to the conflicts that arise at the beginning of the Cold War.

Towards the end of class you worked on blank map of postwar Europe. It looked something like this:

Knowing where countries are in relationship to one another makes it much easier for you to make sense of information and to understand geopolitical issues.

We ended the lesson by starting to talk about the Russian Revolution. We'll pick up here week 9. And from there we'll move on to events connected to the start of the Cold War.


Here are some of the graphics in your book:

English from w. 9: