The reading, “The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Bomb,” by Robert James Maddox, explains the process taken in for the Americas to decide to drop the two newly discovered atomic bombs over the Japanese homeland cities of Hiroshima and three days later Nagasaki. Americans should be well informed on this information. This is a perfect article for this class because it marks a very important milestone in our nation’s history. The Japanese were a strong powerful enemy of the US during the end of WWII. “The Japanese had more than 2,000,000 troops in the home lands, and were training millions of irregulars” pg.
He had seen the inroads made by Soviet propaganda in western Europe, particularly in 1947 through 1949, and believed that American will and policies had defeated the USSR’s efforts to sway elections and upset the Marshall Plan. The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and, in the following year, Radio Liberation (soon Radio Liberty) became part of the institutional fabric of containment. [5] The president thought that he had learned correctly from recent history, and he went on to the next step of his strategy in the partnership between the public and private sectors: the moral suasion and power of faith. As leader of the strongest power of the free world, he aimed to harness and coordinate the world’s religions in an effort to stop the Communists and what he viewed as their elemental
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States wanted in on the war. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision turned out to be just fine, as the Allies defeated the Axis once and for all in September 2, 1945, when the Japanese had to fight alone. The U.S. had justice done. The 1940’s was a decade where warfare and politics dominated the scene. The formation of the Allies and Axis was a major and crucial development in the second edition of World War, and the Allied powers ultimately prevailed as the stronger unit.
Two years after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union buckled. The Communist party was broken because the Russian Republic hindered to eject Gorbachev from office. In December 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) included Russian Republics. “The Russian Republic assumed leadership of the CIS, but the Soviet Union was no more.” The Cold War was a long drawn out battle between Democracy and Communism. The United States believed that a country should have the ability to choose its government; not be feared of it.
Faced with an immensely difficult task of resisting an attack from a vicious enemy with an upstanding army greater than all other signatories combined (“History of the Atlantic Alliance” 1), it quickly became clear that mutual cooperation was needed to achieve their common goal. This alliance was formalized with the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on United States soil in Washington on April 4, 1949 by: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States (“HAA” IV 1). In 1952 Greece and Turkey were invited to join, and Germany was permitted acceptance in 1954 (NATO Topics 2). Democracy means the freedom to choose and the right to speak out against injustice; any attempts at the destruction of it would not be tolerated. In beginning years for NATO it had one main concern: stop the expansion of the United Socialists Soviet Republic.
Following, Marx ideas of socialism, the Social Democratic Party was set up in 1898. However, four years later in 1903 they spilt into 2 groups- the Bolsheviks (lead by Lenin) and the Mensheviks (lead by Martov). Lenin proposed that the party should be limited only to dedicated revolutionaries but Martov argued that membership should be open to anyone who accepted the party programme and was willing to follow the instructions of the party leaders. Lenin won the debate and his group was later called the Bolsheviks whilst Martov’s group was called the Mensheviks. This disagreement arose because of a profound difference in their beliefs of the role of the party.
(Page 12) Reagan demanded that the Soviet’s “surrender “ (change their behavior) and without changing these behaviors, they would no longer receive the many benefit they were benefiting from, from the West. Sharansky explained that this had been a revolution in diplomatic thinking, and in doing this…Reagan was able to find the “Achilles Heel” of His enemies. PART 2: Sharansky’s formula for the mechanics of tyranny divided the world into two different categories. One category was free society in which people could speak freely of their opinions and not be punished for it and the second society was know as the fear society which was pretty much the opposite.
In one Eastern country after another, he created pro-Communist governments not likely to be undermined by a free election any time soon. As for Germany, he took his Soviet sector and reaped billions of dollars of reparations from it annually. The forty-five year separation of East and West Germany was finalized by the Western demand that Stalin not take reparations from their sectors. The United States became even more distrustful of Stalin because he failed to keep his promises. The division of Germany into four regions of interest and also the division of Berlin resulted in an attempt by Stalin to make the Western Allies relinquish control of their sectors.
Containment may have of failed and been made evident with the Cuban missile crisis however it led to a growing awareness of the need to create some control over the nuclear arms race by placing restrictions on nuclear tests. The assessment is valid in saying that the missile crisis was complete evidence containment failed as more countries in Eastern Europe were becoming communist. Containment was a failure before the crisis because in 1948 Czechoslovakia was forced to accept communism. Even though in 1947 they were not fully communist there were still some communist-dominated coalition governments. Until the Czech coup, the emphasis in Washington had been on economic containment of Communism, primarily through the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and a heavy reliance on atomic power as a shield to support it.
Germany 1 Presidential Powers A major principle under the US Constitution is division of powers in the three branches of government. The Constitution emphasizes cooperation between the three arms of government in caring out their duties. Separation of powers discourages a sense of dominating the others arms of government and rule tyrannically. Our founding fathers designed the separation of powers as so one branch of government could not become powerful enough to overthrow the other branches of government. During the Korean War, President Harry Truman and his advisors believed that American involvement in the war required economic mobilization at home.