Assessment #1-5 and Some Class Notes

1.)

• United Nations (UN) - A meeting place for many countries in order to keep peace throughout the world
• Satellite nation - where Stalin created communist countries (countries dominated by the Soviet Union)
• Containment - taking measures in order to prevent the expansion of communist rule into other countries

- Resulted in a much stronger focus on National Security
- National Security Act of 1947 created

• Iron Curtain - phrase standing for division in Europe
• Cold War - a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in which neither confronted each other on the battlefield
• Truman Doctrine - Truman asks Congress for $400 million for economic and military aid for Greece and Turkey
• Marshall Plan - plan to revive Europeans, sending countries around $13 billion in aid

- Make sure "on the edge nations" aren't swayed by ideas of communism

- Europe was largest consumer of US goods (needs markets for goods)

- Strengthen capitalism and democracy in western Europe

Pros: Helped the US like it was planned to do

Cons: Inflation and divided "East and West" Europe even more

• Berlin Airlift - British and American efforts to send food and supplies to Western Berlin
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - Eastern countries join United States and Canada to form a military defense

2.) Soviet Union -

• Stalin didn't keep his promise at Yalta
• Soviet military was not becoming demilitarized

United States -

• Refusing to share information on the bomb with the USSR
• Stalin found that Truman couldn't be trusted

3.) Personally, I do not think that Truman was as fit of a leader as Roosevelt was. First of all Roosevelt had a distinct relationship with Stalin during the Cold War. With a new leader, a new relationship would arise. Also because of Stalin finding out about the Atomic Bomb, Stalin started to distrust the Americans and their loyalty towards the Red Army.

4.) Through the whole period I believe that the Americans won what they were fighting for. Many of the things that the Soviet Union wanted they got but they didn't come out successful. War was fought on their turf and they were too heavy set on getting what they wanted that they didn't really think of the consequences.

5.) Stalin wanted to keep expending his Communist ideas throughout Europe. He wanted to diminish the ideas that the Western Nations had about ruling. Considering that the Soviets had a different view of democracy than most of the rest of the world, this played a large part in his motivations.

US Goals as "Savoir of the Word" -

• Pursuit of nuclear superiority
• Outlying bases
• Raw materials and markets
• Supremacy in Latin America
• Control of Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Kindertransport in WWII

I'm using a magazine and other websites from the library that one of the librarians told me to use "History Today"

• Kindertransport was the transport of Jewish Refugee Children in places like Nazi Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria and safely into Great Britain
• No one older than 17
• Children were separated from their parents and sent to boarding homes in Great Britain
• First transport was 200 children from Berlin to Harwich, England on December 2, 1938
• At least two transports every week with about the same number
• When WWII had officially began in 1939 10,000+ refugees had been sent to Great Britain

The Journey to Britain

• All of the children had to say goodbye to their families on the railway
• Many of them never got to see them again
• Nazi guards would sometimes raid the carts and look for valuables scaring the already frightening children
• Many excited but also worried about what life in Great Britain would be like

Life in Britain

• Many were amazed with how different life was in Britain

- Plenty of food

- Allowed to go where they wanted without discrimination (no separation of Aryans)

- Higher standard of living

• Some went with family friends or relatives in the UK
• Not great for some in new foster homes with new mean "aunts and uncles"
• Not all people who came forward to help with foster care were the best but they needed the space due to the influx of children entering
• Anti-Semitic life and new land had ruined most of the childhoods of them
• Children started to do everything they could to get their family out of Nazi Europe once in the UK
• During WWII communications had been killed between the children and their homelands - many were not "enemy nations" falling into Hitler's hands
• Showing gratitude for Britain was hard

- Younger girls knitted things for the troops

- Older grils joined the army forces of the UK and became nurses

- Boys volunteered for the army when they were old enough

• As the war went on the refugees were often made fun of for their "strange" names and many times interned as alien enemies to places like Australia or Canada
• Children of Kindertransport learned of assimilation because many of them did not even consider themselves religious