Take Home Test Chapter 30 Ap Human Geography

Take Home Test

Chapter 30
1. Describe the dispute between the United States and Russia at the end of World War II. How and why did it escalade into a cold war? Roosevelt had always tried for the most peaceful agreements with Stalin and the Soviet Union. When he died and Truman succeeded him, Truman immediately demanded free elections throughout Eastern Europe. Stalin refused. “A freely elected government in any of these Eastern European countries would be anti-Soviet,” he said, “and that we cannot allow.” American ideals demanded free elections in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe and Stalin wanted absolute military security from Germany and its potential Eastern allies. Stalin believed that only communist states could be trusted and that free elections would lead to independent and hostile governments on western borders. Stalin became determined to spread communism throughout Europe and the world. Truman then went on to try to contain communism to areas occupied by the Red Army. Stalin then created soviet style dictatorships throughout Eastern Europe and blocked Berlin from Germany. The United States supported Berlin by dropping food from flyovers and the Soviets finally backed down after about a year. The United States then formed NATO as an anti-Soviet military alliance. Then communism took over China leading to back and forth bloody contests in Korea between the north and south.
2. Why were the Teheran and Yalta conferences important in shaping the map of postwar Europe? The conference at Teheran was where the Big Three reaffirmed their determination to crush Germany and looked for the right military strategies. It led to the agreement that the Soviet and the American-British army’s would come together in defeated Germany along a north-south line and that only Soviet troops would liberate Eastern Europe. At Yalta, the agreement was made that Germany would be divided into zones of occupation and would pay heavy reparations to the Soviet Union. For America, Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan after Germany was defeated. Also, eastern European governments were to be freely elected but pro-Russian.
3. What are the sources of the Soviet Union’s paranoia about Germany and vice versa? The Soviet Union had been through two enormously destructive German invasions and was worried about more invasions. Germany had much paranoia because they were worried about invasion from the Soviet and union and also after they had been defeated, 13 million Germans were driven from their homes and forced to resettle in a greatly reduced Germany. The Russians were also seizing up factories and equipment as reparations, even tearing up railroad tracks and sending everything back to the Soviet Union.
4. How did Europe accomplish economic recovery after the war? What factors contributed to its growth? French statesmen, Jean Monnet and foreign minister Robert Schuman, called for a special international organization to control and integrate all European steel and coal production. West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherland and Luxemburg accepted the French idea but Britain would not. In 1957 the six nations of the Coal and Steel Community signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community, generally known as the Common Market. The treaty wanted a reduction of tariffs among the six to create a single market almost as large as the United States. They also wanted free movement of capital and labor and common economic policies and institutions. It was a great success.
5. Which approach toward European unity was most successful, the political or economic? Why? The economic approach to European unity was most successful. There was first the creation of the Organization or European Economic Cooperation and the Council of Europe. European federalists hoped this would turn into a true European parliament with sovereign rights but this did not happen. Frustrated with the direct political approach they went for a more economic way. The Common Market was formed and it fired imagination and encouraged hope for rapid progress. Then nationalism resurged and France took the lead. The French turned to General de Gaulle who saw the United States as a threat to independence and withdrew his military forces from NATO and started developing France’s own nuclear weapons. Thus, the Common Market was thriving economically but the political aspect was at a low end.
6. Was nationalism completely dead in postwar Europe? Who was Charles DeGaulle and what was his ambition? Nationalism was not dead in postwar Europe. Charles de Gaulle was the inspiring wartime leader of the Free French and re-established the free and democratic Fourth Republic as well as the Fifth Republic and ruled as its president until 1969. He was a nationalist at heart and saw the United States as a threat to the genuine French and European independence. He withdrew all French military forces from NATO. Charles de Gaulle was out to better France as a nationalistic country.
7. What impact did the Second World War have on peoples’ opinions about imperialism and European empires? People saw imperialism as an evil that spawned the Second World War, causing destruction to many countries. Democracy seemed a much more peaceful way to rule countries, definitely not with empires.
8. Describe the development of nationalism in India and compare it with that in China. Nationalism in India was sparked by the anti-colonial movement. Being oppressed, the people of India began to long for independence. Nationalism brought many different groups and minorities together. Chinese nationalism grew from promotion and survival of the people by surpassing everyone else whether it is ethnically or religiously. These developments are similar but different by interior motives
9. Evaluate Stalin’s postwar policy and actions. Why were many Russian nationalists disappointed in them? How would you judge Stalin’s place in Soviet history? Even before the war ended, Stalin was moving his country back toward rigid dictatorship. Stalin’s new foreign foe in the West provided an excuse for re-establishing a harsh dictatorship. Many returning soldiers and ordinary citizens were purged in 1945 and 1946, as Stalin revived the terrible forced labor camps of the 1930s. Culture and art were also purged in violent campaigns that reimposed rigid anti-Western ideological conformity. Having made historic war effort, the vast majority of the Soviet people hoped that a grateful party and government would grant greater freedom and democracy. Stalin left a large mark in Soviet history, he had built the dictatorship and brought on many wars as well as unreasonable death of his people through purges.
10. What were the reasons for Khrushchev’s fall from power and the beginning of re-Stalinization of Russia in 1964? The basic reason for this development was that Khrushchev’s Communist colleagues saw de-Stalinization as a dangerous, two sided threat. How could Khrushchev denounce the dead dictator without eventually denouncing and perhaps even arresting his still powerful henchmen? Also, the widening campaign of de-Stalinization posed a clear threat to the dictatorial authority of the party. The party had to tighten up considerably while there was still time. Another reason was that his policy toward the West was erratic and ultimately unsuccessful.
11. Describe life in the Soviet Union after 1964. What were the positive and negative features of the Soviet state in the Brezhnev era? The 1960s brought modest liberation and more consumer goods to Eastern Europe, as well as somewhat greater national autonomy, especially in Poland and Romania. The invasion of Czechoslovakia demonstrated the determination of the ruling elite to maintain status quo in the Soviet bloc. The Soviet Union appeared quite stable in the 1970s and early 1980s. A negative point in this era was the need for the launch of a campaign against Czechoslovakia leaders where they had to occupy the country until the leaders surrendered. It prevented the liberation of Czechoslovakia that could have been eventually drawn to neutrality or to the democratic West.
12. What were the milestones in the civil rights revolution? After a long struggle, African Americans cracked the system of segregation, discrimination, and repression. Blacks challenged inequality with bus boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations, specifically about separate facilities for the different races. In the north, African Americans gained the support of the liberal wing of the Democratic party. A liberal landslide elected Lyndon Johnson president in 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public services and on the job; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 guaranteed all blacks the right to vote. Dramatic changes were occurring in this social revolution. There was also the war on poverty that Johnson created where anti-poverty projects started up all over the country.

13. What changes have taken place in the European class structure since World War II? Changes in the structure of the middle class were particularly influential in the general drift toward a less rigid class structure. After 1945, a new breed of managers and experts replaced traditional property owners as the leaders of the middle class. At the same time, the middle class grew quite large and became harder to define. The structure of the middle class also became more flexible and open. There was a mass exodus from farms and the countryside, as one of the most traditional and least mobile groups in Europe drastically declined. Meanwhile, the industrial working class ceased to expand while white collar opportunities and service employees grew rapidly. Europeans, like the Americans, took great pleasure in the gadget revolution, which forever changes society.
14. What changes have taken place in the European class structure since World War I? There were advances for the organized working class, especially its trade unions, and for women, but the working class of Europe paid a high price on the battlefield for social advances at home. And in the defeated states there was very little social advance.
15. What were the reasons and outcome of the European student rebellions of the late 1960’s? Economic Prosperity and a more democratic class structure had a powerful impact on youth. Youth born after World War II developed a distinctive and very international youth culture. They became increasingly oppositional, interacting with the revival of leftist thought to create a “counterculture” that rebelled against parents, authority and the status quo. Growing out of the counterculture and youthful idealism, the student rebellion signaled an era and the return of unrest and uncertainty in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Identify:
Truman Doctrine- aimed at “containing” communism to areas already occupied by the Red Army.

OPEC- (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) – Arab led.

NATO- (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) - anti-Soviet military alliance of Western Governments

Brown versus The Board of Education- court case where eloquent lawyers challenged school segregation and in 1954 won a land mark decision in the Supreme Court that ruled “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”

Common Market- In 1957 the six nations of the Coal and Steel Community signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community , or the Common Market. Wanted free movement of capital and labor and common economic policies and institutions and also to reduce tariffs amoung the six nations in order to create a single market almost as large as that of the United States

Warsaw pact- military treaty eastern European countries which required the countries to come to the aid of the others if they come under foreign hostility

Martin Luther King, Jr.- civil rights leader that told the white power structure “We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws.”

Johnson War on Poverty- creation of host of antipoverty projects, such as domestic peace corps and free preschools for poor children.

Civil Rights Act of 1946- prohibited discrimination in public services and on the job

Bay of Pigs invasion- launched by CIA to invade southern Cuba to over throw the Cuban Government with Fidel Castro – failed attempt

Berlin Airlift- airlift to support blockaded citizens of Berlin who were on the verge of starvation from Soviets severing all transportation in and out of Berlin.
Chapter 31:
Explain the decline of communism in eastern Europe. First, the growth of the urban population continued rapidly. This expanding urban population lost its old peasant ways and exchanged them for more education, better job skills, and greater sophistication. Second, the number of highly trained scientists, managers, and specialists expanded, increasing the fourfold between 1960 and 1985. Thus the class of the well educated, which played such an important role in reconstructing societies after World War II, developed rapidly in the Soviet Union. They sought the intellectual freedom necessary to do significant work, and they often obtained it because their research had practical value. Third, education and freedom for experts in their special areas helped foster the growth of Soviet public opinion. Developing definite ideas on such issues as environmental pollution and urban transportation, educated urban people increasingly saw themselves as worthy of having a voice in society’s decisions, even in its political decisions.
Explain solidarity in Poland. Led by feisty Lenin Shipyards electrician and devout Catholic Lech Walesa, the workers proceeded to organize their own free and democratic trade union. They called it Solidarity. Joined by intellectuals and supported by the Catholic Church, Solidarity became the union of a nation. By March 1981, a full-time staff of 40,000 linked 9.5 million union members together as Solidarity published its own newspapers and cultural and intellectual freedom blossomed in Poland. Solidarity’s leaders had tremendous support, and the ever-present threat of calling a nationwide strike gave them real power in ongoing negotiations with the Communist bosses.
Explain the revolutions of 1989. A series of largely peaceful revolutions swept across Eastern Europe, overturning existing communist regimes and ending the communists’ monopoly of power. Watched on television in the Soviet Union and around the world, these stirring events marked the triumph and the transformation of longstanding opposition to communist rule and foreign domination in Eastern Europe. The revolutions of 1989 had large consequences for Gorbachev and a communist Soviet Union.
Explain the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The people of Eastern Europe joyfully entered the mainstream of contemporary European life and culture after being brutalized for almost 60 years. Also Gorbachev’s reforms boomeranged and an anti-communist revolution swept through the Soviet Union, as the multinational empire broke into a large Russia and fourteen other independent states. Then West Germany quickly absorbed its East German rival and emerged as the most influential country in Europe and the United States rose as the worlds only superpower as the cold war came to an abrupt end.
Discuss German unification and the end of the cold war. East Germany was absorbed into an Enlarged West Germany. Three factors were particularly important in this sudden absorption. First, in the first week after the Berlin Wall was opened, roughly one half of the total population of East Germany poured across the border into West Germany. Second, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and his closest advisers skillfully exploited the historic opportunity. Kohl then promised the struggling citizens of East Germany an immediate economic bonanza, a one for one exchange of all East German accounts and pensions into much more valuable West German marks. Finally, in the summer of 1990, the crucial international aspect of German unification was successfully resolved. In a historic agreement signed by Gorbachev and Kohl in July 1990, a uniting Germany solemnly affirmed its peaceful intentions and pledged never to develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The Paris Accord was for all practical purposes, a general peace treaty, bringing an end to World War II and the cold war that followed.
Explain the recasting of Russia in the 1990s. Politics and economics were closely intertwined in Russia after the attempted Communist coup in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. President Boris Yeltsin opted for breakneck liberalization. The “shock therapy” freed prices on 90 percent of all Russian goods, with the exception of bread, vodka, oil, and public transportation. The government also launched a rapid privatization of industry and turned thousands of factories and mines over to new private owners. The results of the reforms were quite different than expected. Prices increased 250 percent the first day and they kept soaring, increasing twenty-six times in the course of 1992. Runaway inflation and poorly executed privatization brought a profound social revolution to Russia.
Explain the unity and identify Western Europe in the 1990s. The movement toward western European unity received a powerful second wind in the mid 1990s. The Single European Act of 1986 laid down a single market, which would add the free movement of labor, capital, and services to the existing free trade in goods. The Maastricht treaty set strict financial criteria for joining the proposed monetary union, with its single currency, and set 1999 as the target date for its establishment.
What are some of the new challenges in the twenty-first century? Of great significance, Europe continued to experience a remarkable baby bust, as birthrates fell to levels that seemed to promise a shrinking and aging population in the future. At the same time, the peaceful, wealthy European Union attracted rapidly growing numbers of refugees and illegal immigrants. The unexpected arrival of so many newcomers raised many perplexing questions and prompted serious thinking about European identity and Europe’s place in the world. For some western Europeans, the promotion of freedom and human rights emerged increasingly as Europe’s calling in the global era. The terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, reinforced European communist to this cause.