Alex finished his presentation today.
1. Define the Cold War and it's causes
-Trust
The Soviet Union feared atomic weapons. Both countries feared attacks. The U.S. president had a personal dislike to Stalin and Stalin didn’t like us either. The Soviets feared that the U.S> would use Western Europe.
-Actions
Soviet Union wanted to take Western Europe. The Soviet Union and part of Germany were occupied.
2. Policy of Containment -domino effect, mutual deterrence, massive retaliation, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO
-Policy of Containment
It was created by George F. Kennan. It was the U.S. policy to contain communism by using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies.
-Iron Curtain Speech
It was given by Winston Churchill. It was a term for Soviet controlled Europe. There was no actual curtain but it was basically split into east and west. The speech was given in Missouri
-Marshall Plan
It was a U.S. program for rebuilding and creating a better economy for Western Europe. We sent them money to try to rebuild after WWII. We were afraid they were going to become communist.
-Truman Doctrine
It was based on Georges’ long telegram. The term was used for cold war strategies. It gave a bunch of military aid to Greece and Turkey. We were afraid that communism was going to spread there.
-The domino effect or domino theory was that if one country fell to communism then the surrounding countries would fall in. This led to the policy of containment.
5. Fidel Castro, Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis
-Fidel Castro was a member of the Orthodox Party, a social democrat party and strongly criticized Batista. He had overthrown the American backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. He was captured and at his trial he created a speech and it was really famous. He was sentenced for 15 years. He promised democracy. He wouldn’t allow voting when he became the dictator. He was a communist. He was pretty much lying to them. He overthrew Batista and he didn’t like him because he had ties with the U.S.
-Bay of Pigs
The invasion was intended to start an uprising against Castro. This was not JFK’s idea. When they landed they wanted to surprise attack them, but it didn’t work. The U.S. was embarrassed because Cuba was like dominating us. We don’t support them anymore and we don’t give them any good or resources. Anything from Cuba is not allowed in our country to this day.
Castro was convinced that the U.S. was trying to take over the land. Castro was really close to Nikita and Castro was reaching out to the Soviets for help.
There were some Cubans who didn’t like Castro. They left and the CIA trained them to go in and take over. It failed miserably and we were very embarrassed.
It failed because we were supposed to give them air coverage. We thought that the Cubans that were still there would rise up and help us out and take over Castro, but they thought it was the Americans who were attacking so they defended Castro.
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