Friday 5-7-10

[4Nathan]

Today Riley is continuing to present today. The Iron Curtain Speech was given by Winston Churchill at the Westminster College in 1946. The College was in Missouri. It was titled the "Sinews of Peace." The speech was about the Iron Curtain in Europe. The Iron Curtain was an imaginary line tha separated the Communist countries in Europes from the Non-Communist countries in Europe. The Marshall Plan was the European Recovery Program. It would create a stronger economic foundation. George C. Marshall was the man that set up this proposal. The United States gave Europe 13 million dollars. The lent money because many of the major cities in Europe were destroyed after the war. We thought that if we didn't lend money then the Soviet Union would help them and turn them into Communists. George Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the Marshall Plan. The Truman Doctrine was the U.S. strategy for the containment of Communism. Some countries feared the Truman Doctrine. With all the concern about the bill, Truman passed the bill.

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The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the United States. Cuban and Soviet governments were building bases for nuclear missiles. Since Cuba was so close to the United States they would be able to bomb the United States from close range. They were actually the Soviets nuclear weapons that they moved them to Cuba. It is said to be the closest point that the Cold War came to coming to nuclear warfare. Around August 1962 the United States started to suspect the Soviets of building missile bases in Cuba. The idea of placing nuclear weapons in Cuba came from Nikita Khrushchev. The wanted to protect Cuba from U.S. sponsored invasions. They also wanted to counter the lead of the U.S. in developing and deploying strategic missiles. Photographic Proof of missile bases were under construction was caught by a United States U-2 photoreconnaissance on October 14th. The U.S considered attacking Cuba but instead settled on a military quarantine of Cuba.