History Exam Module 1

1. Destroy the Treaty of Versailles, rearm Germany, recover lost lands

2. Bring all German speaking people together under German control

3. Expand eastwards to create Lebensraum

4. Destroy Communism (USSR)

- After 15 years a plebiscite was held

- Nazi campaign to persuade voters to return to German control

- Nazi's used Stormtroopers for intimidation

- In January 1935 90% of the vote was to join with Germany

- German withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference, 1933

- Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Poland

- 1935, conscription introduced in Germany

- 1925, Anglo-German Naval Agreement

- Hitler ordered 32,000 troops to march into the Rhineland, they were to turn back if stopped by GB or France

- Rhinelanders went wild with delight

- GB and France distracted by Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia

- GB thought the Treaty of Versailles had been too harsh

- Austrian leader arranged plebiscite to ask Austrian people whether they wanted a union with Germany

- German troops moved to Austrian border

- Austrian Nazis rioted the streets

- Nazis invited in to restore order and arrested more than 80,000 Nazi opponents

- Plebiscite held- 99.75% voted in favour of Anschluss

For:

- Treaty of Versailles too harsh

- Gives them time to rearm

- British people didn't want war

- Buffer for Communism

Against:

- Encouraged Hitler

- Made Germany stronger

- Hitler wanted the Sudetenland as it was rich in raw materials, contained many Germans, contained Czechoslovakia's defences

- Hitler encouraged the Nazis there to riot

- Chamberlain tried to bargain with Hitler not to take over

- At the Munich Agreement Chamberlain agreed Hitler could have the Sudetenland as long as he did not take the rest of Czechoslovakia (the Czechs and Stalin weren't consulted)

- The Czech president was forced to hand Czechoslovakia over after the Slovaks rioted

- End of appeasement

- Agreed not to attack each other

- Agreed to divide Poland between them

- Hitler avoided a war on two fronts

- Hitler still believed GB and France would back down if he invaded Poland

- GB and France declared war on Germany two days after Hiltler invaded Poland

- East (Soviet Union) = Communism

- West (USA) = Capitalism

- The 'Big Three' - Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt

- Germany and Berlin to be in 4 zones

- Free elections in Eastern Europe

- United Nations set up to keep peace

- Disagreed about Poland's borders but Churchill and Roosevelt let Stalin have his way, if he didn't interfere with Greece

- 'Big Three' except with Truman instead of Roosevelt

- Divisions of Germany and Berlin confirmed

- German-Polish border fixed

- Couldn't agree on:

• Reparations
• How to treat Germany
• Governments of Eastern Europe

- Truman was more suspicious of Stalin than Roosevelt had been

- Stalin feared Britain and USA would help Germany

- Stalin hadn't allowed London Poles in Poland, which he had said he would at Yalta

- USA told Stalin about their atomic bomb and then used it on Japan

- Hiroshima and Nagasaki

- Killed/seriously injured everyone near

- All vegetation destroyed

- Radiation stays in the body through generations and causes cancer

- Radiation sickness effected those who survived

- Stage 1 = Poland - rigged elections

- Stage 2 = Romania and Bulgaria - Red Army invaded + got rid of monarchy - Red Army invaded + rigged elections + abolished monarchy

- Stage 3 = Hungary - free election but ignored it when Communists lost + held another election and rigged it

- Stage 4 = Czechoslovakia - fair election + new rigged election + used armed forces and arrested + murdered foreign minister

- Made by Churchill

- Warned America of the dangers of Stalin's 'Iron Curtain' and the spread of Communism

- Wants to gain American support in case of a Communist take over in Europe

- Domino Theory

- Set of ideas laid down by Truman to support countries against Communist influence

- Main aim = 'containment'

- Lead to = no communist threat in Greece, Turkey avoided Communist take over + definite divide between East and West Europe

- Lead to Cominform

- Communist Information Bureau

- Main aim = to counter-act the Truman Doctrine

- Gave money to countries in Europe

- Main aim = to make countries economically stable so that the idea of Communism won't appeal to them

- Was available to all countries but Stalin forbade Communist countries under his control from taking it

- Bizonia = Britain and USA joined their sectors in Germany together and stopped taking reparations in order to aid recovery in West Germany

- Trizonia = France joined

- Stalin felt betrayed + becomes suspicious - at Yalta it had been agreed that any decisions about Germany would be taken jointly

- It was one of the causes of the Berlin Blockade

- Caused by Bizonia/Trizonia, Deutschmark + Marshall Aid

- Stalin blockaded the people of West Berlin - he cut off rail, road and canal supplies to the western zone of the city

- Stalin thouht that if he starved the people there enough, the western leaders would give in to his demands - give him the western sector of Berlin, give up the Deutschmark and give up their plans for a completely separate West Germany

- The West's solution to the blockade

- Planes brought food and other supplies from Western Germany to West Berlin through the air passages over East Germany

- Lasted 10 months

- Aircraft were landing and taking off very 90 seconds

Results:
- Stalin called off the Blockade
- Stalin appeared weak
- War was avoided
- No hope of a united Germany
- (1949) West becomes Federal Republic of Germany and the East becomes German Democratic Republic

- Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (Communist)

- A retaliation to Marshall Aid

- North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - a military alliance between Capitalist countries that agreed to protect eachother against Communism

- Formed during the Airlift because Britain were worried about war and were under-defended against the Soviets

- Countries involved were USA, Britain and other non-communist countries in Europe

Results:
- Permenant presence of American troops in Europe
- Stalin saw it as an aggressive act and sped up his plans for Soviet nuclear bombs
- Stalin talked bout starting a war in Europe

- USSR has been working on this since the USA created one and refused to help them create theirs

- This was a detterant and a 'MAD situation' because both countries knew that if they attacked with nuclear weapons, they would be attacked straight back

- North Korea, Communist was run by the USSR and South Korea, Capitalist was run by the USA and they both thought that their ideology should run the whole of Korea

- War started when North Korea invaded the South

- South then got help from the UN and pushed North Korea back into the North

- China felt threatened and pushed the South Koreans back

- USA bring in more troops and pushed the North Koreans back to the 38th parallel where both sides were stuck until a ceasefire in 1953

Results:
- Cold war is now in Asia as well
- Actual conflict has occured
- UN are now seen as a success

- Soviet counter group to NATO 'friendship, co-operation and mutual existence'

- Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and a few other countries

- Formed after West Germany was admitted to NATO

Results:
- Soviet Union cancelled their wartime alliances with Britain and France
- No chance of the countries making up

- He closed down Cominform

- Publicly attacked Stalin for his terroristic dictatorship

- He seemed to allow countries in the Eastern Bloc more freedom

- He pursued a policy of De-Stalination and removed all things to do with Stalin

- He believed that Communism would triumph over Capitalism on its own and did not need aggression to do this

- Revolts against Communism were ruthlessly put down

- Continued the Nuclear Arms Race

Causes:
- Lack of cultural freedom (government controlled media, arts & literature and children were taught Soviet history and not about Hungarian links with the West)

- Rule by fear (AVO - the secret police and no freedom of speech)

- Poor standards of living (industrial workers got bad pay and food shortages because everyone was made to work on Soviet farms)

- Presence of Soviet troops (resented Red Army in towns and made people uneasy)

What happened:
-Stalin imposed a Communist government on Hungary

- Khrushchev comes into power in the USSR and made the leading Hungarian Communist, Rakoski, invite a Imre Nagy, a reformer, into the government

- Rakoski and Nagy argued and Nagy was thrown out of government

- Demonstrations and protests in Budapest led to the election of Imre Nagy as Prime Minister in October 1956

- Nagy immediately announced a programme of reform. Governmant control of the radio and press was ended. Non communists were allowed to participate in government and he announced that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact

- Khrushchev thought this was unacceptable so on 4th November 1956 the Red Army returned and crushed the Hungarian uprising

- Sputnik I was launched: October 1957

- Sputnik II was launched: November 1957

- NASA created: July 1958

- Explorer I launched by USA: January 1958

- USA put the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong: July 1969

- Gary Powers flew a U-2 US plane on a spy mission for the CIA

- His aim was to fly over the USSR and get aerial photos of military bases

- He was shot down over Sverdlovsk and his mission discovered

- At first the USSR didn't tell the USA that they knew it was a spy plane, they just told them they had found a plane

- The USA tried to cover up and said it was a weather plane, but were of course found out

- This was the end of the 'thaw' in the Cold War

Stalin's motives:
- Stop people fleeing from East to West

- Stop people from East Berlin contributing to the West's economy

- Prove the divide is going to last

- East can't see how much better off the West are

- To show power

- Keep US spies out

Long term causes:
- Bizonia and Trizonia
- Deutschmark
- NATO
- East Berliners fleeing West

Short term causes:
- U-2 crisis meant the Paris Summit Meeting was cancelled so nothing was decided about Berlin so Stalin was free to do what he wanted
- US wouldn't move their armed forces from West Berlin

- USSR started building Nuclear Missile bases on Cuba, 90 miles from USA, which the USA found out about

- Kennedy put a Naval Blockade on Cuba to stop more supplie from the USSR getting in

- Khrushchev sent Kennedy a letter saying the missiles are just defensive and then another letter saying he will remove the missiles if Kennedy removed his missiles from Turkey

- Kennedy ignores the first letter but accepts the terms of the second letter

- Both sets of nuclear missiles are removed, but the removal of the missiles in Turkey is kept a secret from the rest of the world

The Prague Spring:
- Leader of Czech Communist party, Dubcek, introduced a more relaxed version of Communism called 'Communism with a human face'

- Censorship of the the press and radio was removed

- Powers of the secret police were removed

- The borders with the west were opened and the Czechs could trade with them and travel there

The USSR's response:
- Brezhnev Doctrine = if a people against Communism try and turn a country Capitalist, then all other Communist countries need to get involved and stop it, possibly by force

- 20th August 1968 Soviet tanks and other Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia

- Remembering what happened in Hungary, the Czech government didn't resist, so there was no fighting, only passive resistance by the people

- After about a year, the opposition died down; the Soviets had restored their control by force