GENERAL AWARENESS

MODULE NOTES (501)

BY: SHWETA DANDEKAR (212) NANDAN SHARALAYA (226) P. ASHA RITU (273) MANALI MISHRA (303)

SYLLABUS
SHWETA DANDEKAR (212):
1. World War II aftermath 2. Joeseph Stalin 3. Nuremberg Trials

NANDAN SHARALAYA (226):

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Korean War Mao Zedong Tibet American Civil Rights Cuban Missile Crisis

P. ASHA RITU (273):

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Space Race Arab Israel Crisis The Munich Massacre The Vietnam War Pol Pot

MANALI MISHRA (303):

1. 2. 3. 4. The Soviet Afghan War Chernobyl Disaster of 1986 Tiananmen Square Massacre The Fall of the Soviet Union (Compiled and edited by Shweta Dandekar)

AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II

IMMEDIATE EFFECTS
WARSAW y At the end of the war, millions of people were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and much of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed. The Soviet Union had been heavily affected, with 30% of its economy destroyed. Luftwaffe bombings of Frampol, Wielu and Warsaw in 1939 instituted the practice of bombing purely civilian targets. Many other cities suffered similar annihilation as this practice was continued by both the Allies and Axis forces. The United Kingdom ended the war economically exhausted by the war effort. The wartime coalition government was dissolved; new elections were held, and Winston Churchill was defeated in a landslide general election by the Labor Party under Clement Attlee. In 1947, United States Secretary of State George Marshall devised the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, effective in the years 1948 1952. It allocated US$13 billion for the reconstruction of Western Europe.

SOVIET UNION y The losses suffered by the Soviet Union in the war against Germany were enormous. Total demographic population loss was about 40 million people, of which 8.7 million were combat deaths. The non-military deaths of approximately 19 million included deaths by starvation in the siege of Leningrad; deaths in German prisons and concentration camps, from mass shootings of civilians, from famine and disease; deaths of laborers in German industry; deaths in Soviet camps; and the deaths of both Soviet non-conscript partisans and of Soviet citizens not conscripted into the Soviet armed forces who died in German or German-controlled military units fighting the USSR. Soviet ex-POWs and ci0vilians repatriated from abroad were suspected of having been Nazi collaborators, and 226,127 of them were sent to forced labor camps after scrutiny by Soviet intelligence, NKVD. Many ex-POWs and young civilians were also conscripted to serve in the Red Army, others worked in labor battalions to rebuilt infrastructure destroyed during the war.

Although the Soviet Union was victorious in World War II, its economy had been devastated. Roughly a quarter of the country's capital resources were destroyed and industrial and agricultural output in 1945 fell far short of prewar levels.

To help rebuild the country, the Soviet government obtained limited credits from Britain and Sweden but refused assistance proposed by the United States under the economic aid program known as the Marshall Plan. Instead, the Soviet Union compelled Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe to supply machinery and raw materials. Germany and former Nazi satellites including Finland made reparations to the Soviet Union. The reconstruction program emphasized heavy industry, to the detriment of agriculture and consumer goods. By 1953, steel production was twice its 1940 level, but the production of many consumer goods and foodstuffs was lower than it had been in the late 1920s.

GERMANY Partition y In the west, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France, and by declaring Germany to be the territory it had contained within its boundaries of December 31, 1937, the Sudetenland was reverted back to Czechoslovakia. In addition, close to 1/4 of pre-war (1937) Germany was de-facto annexed by the Allies, and the surviving roughly 10 million Germans were either expelled from or (if they had fled during the fighting) refused to return to their homes. The remainder of Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, coordinated by the Allied Control Council. The Saar was detached and put in economic union with France in 1947. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was created out of the Western zones. The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic. Austria was separated from Germany and divided into four zones of occupation, which reunited in 1955 to become the Republic of Austria.

y y

Reparations y Germany paid reparations to the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union mainly in the form of dismantled factories, forced labor, and coal. Germany was to be reduced to the standard of living she had at the height of the Great Depression. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the US and Britain pursued an "intellectual reparations" program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. The value of these amounted to around US$10 billion, equivalent to about US$100 billion in 2006 terms. In accordance with the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, payment of reparations was assessed from the countries of Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.

JAPAN

y y

After the War the Allies rescinded Japanese pre-war annexations such as Manchuria, and Korea became independent. The Soviet Union (one of the Allies) also annexed the Kurils, leading to the still ongoing Kuril Islands dispute. US President Roosevelt had at the Yalta conference secretly traded the Japanese Kurils and south Sakhalin to the Soviet Union in return for Soviet entry in the war with Japan. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese were forced to relocate to the Japanese main islands. Okinawa became a main U.S. staging point covering large areas of it with military bases; it remained occupied until 1972 (many years longer than Japan itself). The bases still remain. Many Japanese soldiers were, in order to negate the Geneva Convention, classified as Japanese Surrendered Personnel instead of POW, and were used as forced labor until 1947. Some Japanese troops were utilized by the European colonial forces to fight against the liberation movements that had sprung up in Asia and were trying to stop the UK, France and the Netherlands from re-colonizing them. Japanese War crimes trials, similar to the Nuremberg trials, were held. Reparations were collected from Japan. To further remove Japan as a potential future military threat, the Far Eastern Commission decided that Japan must partly de-industrialize. Dismantling of Japanese industry was foreseen to have been achieved when Japanese standards of living were reduced to those between 1930 and 1934. In the end the adopted prog bv bv nbmg ram of de-industrialization in Japan was implemented to a lesser degree than the similar U.S. "industrial disarmament" program in Germany. Japan received emergency aid from GARIOA, just as Germany, and in view of the cost to American taxpayers for the emergency aid; in April 1948 the Johnston Committee Report recommended that the economy of Japan should be reconstructed. In early 1946 the Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia were formed and permitted to supply Japanese with food and clothes.

War victims y In Japan, survivors of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as hibakusha were ostracized by Japanese society. Japan provided no special assistance to these people until 1952. By the 65th anniversary of the bombings, total casualties from the initial attack and later deaths reached about 270,000 in Hiroshima and 150,000 in Nagasaki. About 230,000 hibakusha are still alive, about 2200 of who are suffering from radiationcaused illnesses.

Population displacement

As a result of the new borders drawn by the victorious nations, large populations suddenly found themselves in hostile territory. The Soviet Union took over areas formerly controlled by Germany, Finland, Poland, and Japan. Rape during occupation y As Soviet troops marched across the Balkans, they committed rapes and robberies in Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The population of Germany was treated significantly worse. Rape and murder of German civilians was as bad as, and sometimes worse than Nazi propaganda had expected it to be. Political officers encouraged Russian troops to seek revenge and terrorize the German population. Estimates of the numbers of rapes committed by Soviet soldiers range from tens of thousands to 2 million. About one-third of all German women in Berlin were raped by Soviet forces. A substantial minority were raped multiple times. In Berlin, contemporary hospital records indicate between 95,000 and 130,000 women were raped by Russian troops. About 10,000 of these women died, mostly by suicide. Over 4.5 million Germans fled towards the West. The Soviets initially had no rules against their troops fraternizing with German women, but by 1947 started to isolate their troops from the German population in an attempt to stop rape and robbery by the troops. German soldiers left many war children behind in nations such as France and Denmark, which were occupied for an extended period. After the war, the children and their mothers often suffered recriminations.

Post-war tensions
EUROPE y The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before World War II was over, when a heated exchange of correspondence took place between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill over whether the Polish Government in Exile, backed by Roosevelt and Churchill, or the Provisional Government, backed by Stalin, should be recognized. Stalin won. A number of allied leaders felt that war between the United States and the Soviet Union was likely; in fact, on May 19, 1945, American Under-Secretary of State Joseph Grew went so far as to say that it was inevitable. On March 5, 1946, in his "Sinews of Peace" (Iron Curtain) speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill said "a shadow" had fallen over Europe. He described Stalin as having dropped an "Iron Curtain" between East and West. Stalin responded by saying he believed co-existence between the Communist and the capitalist systems was impossible.

In mid-1948 the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on the Western zone of occupation in Berlin.

The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied control. Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviet zone to start supplying Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving the Soviets practical control over the entire city. In response, the Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin. The United Kingdom's Royal Air Force and the recently independent United States Air Force flew over 200,000 flights in one year, providing up to 4700 tons of daily necessities such as fuel and food to the Berliners. Alongside British and US personnel the airlift involved aircrews from the Royal Australian Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force and South African Air Force. By the spring of 1949, the effort was clearly succeeding and, by April, the airlift was delivering more cargo than had previously been transported into the city by rail. The success of the Berlin Airlift brought humiliation to the Soviets who had refused to believe it could make a difference. The blockade was lifted in May 1949 and resulted in the creation of two separate German states. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) split up Berlin. y Due to the rising tension in Europe and concerns over further Soviet expansion, American planners came up with a contingency plan code-named Operation Dropshot in 1949. It considered possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union and its allies in order to counter the anticipated Soviet takeover of Western Europe, the Near East and parts of Eastern Asia due to start around 1957. In response, the US would saturate the Soviet Union with atomic and high-explosive bombs, and then invade and occupy the country. In later years, to reduce military expenditures while countering Soviet conventional strength, President Eisenhower would adopt a strategy of "massive retaliation", a doctrine relying on the threat of a US nuclear strike to prevent nonnuclear incursions by the Soviet Union in Europe and elsewhere. This approach would entail a major buildup of US nuclear forces and a corresponding reduction in America's non-nuclear ground and naval strength. The Soviet Union would view these developments as "atomic blackmail". In order to ensure that Western Europe could withstand the Soviet military threat the Western European Union was founded in 1948, and NATO in 1949. The NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium.

y y y

The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". However, without the manpower and industrial output of West Germany no conventional defense of Western Europe had any hope of succeeding. To remedy this, in 1950 the US sought to promote the European Defense Community, which would have included a rearmed West Germany. The attempt was dashed by its rejection by the French parliament. On May 9, 1955 West Germany was instead admitted to NATO, the immediate result of which was the creation of the Warsaw Pact five days later.

Asia
KOREA y At the Yalta Conference the Allies agreed that an undivided post-war Korea would be placed under four-power multinational trusteeship. After Japan's surrender, this agreement was modified to a joint Soviet-American occupation of Korea. The agreement was that Korea would be divided and occupied by the Russians from the north and the Americans from the south. Korea, formerly under Japanese rule, and which had been partially occupied by the Red Army following the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, was divided at the 38th parallel on the orders of the US War Department. A United States Military Government in southern Korea was established in the capital city of Seoul. Simultaneously, the Russians enabled a build-up of heavy armaments to pro-communist forces in the north. The military line became a political line in 1948, when separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel, each republic claiming to be the legitimate government of Korea. It culminated in the north invading the south, and the Korean War two years later.

COVERT OPERATIONS AND ESPIONAGE y British covert operations in the Baltic States, which began in 1944 against the Nazis, were escalated after the war to include the recruitment and training in London of Balts, in a covert operation by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) codenamed Jungle, for the clandestine infiltration of intelligence and resistance agents into the Baltic states between 1948 and 1955. The agents were landed on a Baltic beach by an experienced former Nazi naval captain. The agents were mostly Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian emigrants who had been trained in the UK and Sweden and were to link up with the anti-Soviet resistance in the occupied states. British intelligence also trained and infiltrated anti-communist agents into Russia from across the Finnish border, with orders to assassinate Soviet officials.

MI6's entire intelligence network in the Baltic States became completely compromised, penetrated and was covertly controlled by the KGB as a result of counter-intelligence supplied to the KGB by British spy Kim Philby. Harold (Kim) Philby, the son of the diplomat, John Philby, was born in Ambala, India, in 1911. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. To provide a cover, Philby began openly expressed right-wing opinions. Philby and Guy Burgess, who also renounced his communism, joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, a pro-Nazi pressure group. Philby got himself appointed as a reporter with The Times and on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he was sent to Spain. Over the next couple of years he provided articles that were very sympathetic to General Francisco Franco and the Nationalist Army. Franco was grateful for the support Philby gave to the Nationalists and on 2nd March, 1938, awarded him the Red Cross of Military Merit. These reports convinced those on the right-wing of British politics that Philby had abandoned his former political views. Later that year Walter Krivitsky, a senior Soviet intelligence officers, who had defected to the West, was brought to London to be interviewed by Dick White and Guy Liddell of MI6. Krivitsky gave details of 61 agents working in Britain. He did not know the names of these agents but described one as being a journalist who had worked for a British newspaper during the Spanish Civil War. Another was described as "a Scotsman of good family, educated at Eton and Oxford, and an idealist who worked for the Russians without payment." These descriptions fitted Philby and Donald Maclean. However, White and Liddle were not convinced by Krivitsky's testimony and his leads were not followed up. Walter Krivitsky was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel in Washington on 10th February, 1941. At first it was claimed that Krivitsky had committed suicide. However, others claimed his hiding place had been disclosed by a Soviet mole working for MI5 and had been murdered by Soviet agents. During the Second World War Philby was placed in charge of the propaganda training program for the Special Operations Executive. By 1943 Philby had responsibility for Spanish, Italian, French and African affairs. He came to the attention of Major General Stewart Menzies, Director-General of MI6. Menzies was impressed with Philby and in October 1944 he was placed in charge of Section IX (Soviet Affairs). After the war Philby was responsible for monitoring Soviet espionage. In this role he was able to protect other Soviet agents such as Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt. In September 1945, a Russian diplomat, Constantin Volkhov, approached the British vice-consul in Istanbul with information about three Soviet agents working in the Foreign Office and the counter-espionage service

y y

y y

y y

y y

in London. Philby was able to tell the KGB who quickly arrested Volkhov and took him back to the Soviet Union. On 5th September 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in the Russian Legation, defected to the West claiming he had evidence of a Soviet spy ring based in Britain. Gouzenko provided evidence that led to the arrest of 22 local agents and 15 Soviet spies in Canada. Gouzenko also claimed that there was a Soviet agent inside MI6. However, he was later to argue that Hollis showed little interest in this evidence. "The mistake in my opinion in dealing with this matter was that the task of finding the agent was given to MI6 itself. The results even beforehand could be expected to be nil." In 1949 Philby became the MI6 liaison officer in Washington. In this post he was able to discover that MI6 planned to overthrow Enver Hoxha, the communist dictator of Albania. Philby was able to communicate this information to the Soviet Union and the Albanians involved in the conspiracy were arrested and executed. In 1950, there was a discussion of the possibility of Philby becoming the next Director General of the MI6. Dick White was asked to produce a report on Philby. He asked to carry out an investigation into his past. They became concerned about how quickly he changed from a communist sympathizer to a supporter of pro-fascist organizations. They also discovered that the description of the mole provided by Walter Krivitsky and Igor Gouzenko was close to that of Philby's time in Spain as a journalist. It was now decided that Philby could in fact be a double-agent. When Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected in 1951 Philby became the chief suspect as the man who had tipped them off that they were being investigated. Under pressure from Clement Attlee and Herbert Morrison, Stewart Menzies agreed that Philby should be interrogated by MI6. However, they cleared him of being part of a spy ring. However, the CIA insisted that he should be recalled to London. In September 1951 Philby officially resigned from MI6 but continued to work for the organization on a part-time basis. He was also paid 4,000 to compensate him for losing his job. Philby now moved to the Middle East where he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Observer and the The Economist. He also continued to work as a part-time agent of MI6. In December 1961, Anatoli Golitsin, a KGB agent, working in Finland, defected to the CIA. He was immediately flown to the United States and lodged in a safe house called Ashford Farm near Washington. When interviewed, Golitsin supplied information about a large number of Soviet agents working in the West. Golitsin provided evidence that suggested that Kim Philby had been a member of a Ring of Five agents based in Britain. It was now decided to send the MI6 agent, Nicholas Elliott to interview Philby in Beirut.

y y y

Philby was now aware that he was in danger of being arrested and therefore on 23rd January, 1963, Philby fled to the Soviet Union. In his book, My Silent War (1968), Philby admitted that he had been a Soviet spy for over thirty years. Kim Philby lived in the Soviet Union until his death in 1988. The successes of clandestine American activities in Europe would later be offset by long term damage to its reputation in Vietnam and the Middle East. The Russian intelligence service KGB believed that the Third World rather than Europe was the arena in which it could win the Cold War. Moscow would in later years fuel an arms buildup in Africa and other Third World regions, notably in North Korea. Seen from Moscow, the Cold War was largely about the non-European world. The Soviet leadership envisioned a revolutionary front in Latin America.

Recruitment of former enemy scientists y When the divisions of postwar Europe began to emerge, the war crimes programs and de-nazification policies of Britain and the United States were relaxed in favor of recruiting German scientists, especially nuclear and long-range rocket scientists. Many of these, prior to their capture, had worked on developing the German V-2 long-range rocket at the Baltic coast German Army Research Center. Western Allied occupation force officers in Germany were ordered to refuse to cooperate with the Russians in sharing captured wartime secret weapons.

Founding of the United Nations y As a general consequence and in an effort to maintain international peace, the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, and adopted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, "as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations." The USSR abstained from voting. The US did not ratify the social and economic rights sections.

Economic aftermath y By the end of the war, the European economy had collapsed with 70% of the industrial infrastructure destroyed. The property damage in the Soviet Union consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, and 31,850 industrial establishments. Economic recovery following the war was varied in differing parts of the world, though in general it was quite positive. In Europe, West Germany, after having continued to decline economically during the first years of the Allied occupation, later experienced a seemingly miraculous recovery, and had by the end of the 1950s doubled production from its pre-war levels. Italy came out of the war in poor economic condition, but by

1950s, the Italian economy was marked by stability and high growth. The United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin after the war, and continued to experience relative economic decline for decades to follow. France rebounded quickly, and enjoyed rapid economic growth and modernization. The Soviet Union also experienced a rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era. In Asia, Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth, becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s. China, following the conclusion of its civil war, was essentially a bankrupt nation. By 1953, economic restoration seemed fairly successful as production had resumed prewar levels. This growth rate mostly persisted, though it was briefly interrupted by the disastrous Great Leap Forward economic experiment. At the end of the war, the United States produced roughly half of the world's industrial output; by the early 1970s though, this dominance had lessened significantly.

JOESEPH STALIN Rise to power Trotsky Purges Trotsky supporters, cleansing. Killed popular dude Sergei Kirov and blamed it on them Cult status Collectivization NEP to now 5 year plan Crash industrialization Berlin blockade Purges -religion Died of an attack NKVD
y was mentioned among seven candidates that were qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1948, he was officially nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Questionable tactics Part of 5 March 1940 memo from Lavrenty Beria to

y y

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 5 March 1953) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. While formally the office of the General Secretary was elective and was not initially regarded as the top position in the Soviet state, after Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin managed to consolidate more and more power in his hands, gradually putting down all opposition groups within the party. This included Leon Trotsky, the Red Army organizer, proponent of world revolution, and principal critic of Stalin among the early Soviet leaders, who was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. Instead, Stalin's idea of socialism in one country became the primary line of the Soviet politics.

RISE TO POWER y Lenin still considered Stalin to be a loyal ally, and when he got mired in squabbles with Trotsky and other politicians, he decided to give Stalin more power. With the help of Lev Kamenev, Lenin had Stalin appointed as General Secretary in 1922. This post allowed Stalin to appoint many of his allies to government positions. Lenin suffered a stroke in 1922, forcing him into semi-retirement in Gorki. Stalin visited him often, acting as his intermediary with the outside world. The pair quarreled and their relationship deteriorated. Lenin dictated increasingly disparaging notes on Stalin in what would become his testament. He criticized Stalin's rude manners, excessive power, ambition and politics, and suggested that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary. During Lenin's semi-retirement, Stalin forged an alliance against Leon Trotsky. These allies prevented Lenin's Testament from being revealed to the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923. Lenin died of a heart attack on 21 January 1924. Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union. Stalin pushed for more rapid industrialization and central control of the economy, contravening Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP). At the end of 1927, a critical shortfall in grain supplies prompted Stalin to push for collectivization of agriculture and order the seizures of grain hoards from kulak farmers. In December 1934, the popular Sergei Kirov was murdered. Stalin blamed Kirov's murder on a vast conspiracy of saboteurs and Trotskyites. He launched a massive purge against these internal enemies, putting them on rigged show trials and then having

y y y

them executed or imprisoned in Siberian gulags. With no serious opponents left in power, Stalin ended the purges in 1938.

CHANGES TO SOVIET SOCIETY, 1927 1939

y Stalin vastly increased the scope and power of the state's secret police and intelligence agencies. Under his guiding hand, Soviet intelligence forces began to set up intelligence networks in most of the major nations of the world, including Germany, Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. One of the best examples of Stalin's ability to integrate secret police and foreign espionage came in 1940, when he gave approval to the secret police to have Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico. Stalin created a cult of personality in the Soviet Union around both himself and Lenin. Many personality cults in history have been frequently measured and compared to his. Numerous towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader and the Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were named in his honor. He accepted grandiloquent titles (e.g., "Coryphaeus of Science," "Father of Nations," "Brilliant Genius of Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," "Gardener of Human Happiness," and others), and helped rewrite Soviet history to provide himself a more significant role in the revolution. At the same time, according to Nikita Khrushchev, he insisted that he be remembered for "the extraordinary modesty characteristic of truly great people." Statues of Stalin depict him at a height and build approximating 6 ft, while photographic evidence suggests he was between 5 ft 5 in and 5 ft 6 in (165 168 cm). Trotsky criticized the cult of personality built around Stalin. It reached new levels during World War II, with Stalin's name included in the new Soviet national anthem. Stalin became the focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings and film, exhibiting fawning devotion, crediting Stalin with almost god-like qualities, and suggesting he single-handedly won the Second World War. It is debatable as to how much Stalin relished the cult surrounding him. Stalin, as head of the Politburo, consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party, justified as an attempt to expel 'opportunists' and 'counterrevolutionary infiltrators'. Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party; however, more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps, to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas. In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of Sergei Kirov. At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 1,108 negative votes. After the assassination of Kirov, which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky. The investigations and

y y

trials expanded. Stalin passed a new law on "terrorist organizations and terrorist acts", which were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or appeals, followed by a sentence to be executed "quickly." Thereafter, several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "enemy of the people", starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD -NKVD troikawith sentencing carried out within 24 hours. Many military leaders were convicted of treason, and a large scale purging of Red Army officers followed. The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin. In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937; this eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as Poles, ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed. Many Americans who had immigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed; others were sent to prison camps or gulags. Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin. In light of revelations from the Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror, with the great mass of victims being "ordinary" Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, beggars. Many of the executed were interred in mass graves. Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 which condemned to execution some 40,000 people and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot. At the time, while reviewing one such list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one."

Population transfer

Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition. As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in the loyalty of particular ethnicities, such ethnic groups as the Soviet Koreans, the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens, and many Poles were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union, especially Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have died en route. According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including the entire nationalities in several cases).

Collectivization

y Collectivization meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition of
serfdom in 1861, and alienation from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry. In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and agricultural production by 50%, but these estimates were not met. Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. (However, kulaks proper made up only 4% of the peasant population; the "kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of violence. These peasants were about 60% of the population). Those officially defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers," and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge. Archival data indicates that 20,201 people were executed during 1930, the year of Dekulakization. The two-stage progress of collectivization interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorials, "Dizzy with success" and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of initial strategies.

Famines y Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between five and ten million people. The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths. Most modern scholars agree that the famine was caused by the policies of the government of the Soviet Union under Stalin, rather than by natural reasons.

Industrialization y The Russian Civil War and wartime communism had a devastating effect on the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. A recovery followed under the New Economic Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism. Under Stalin's direction, this was replaced by a system of centrally ordained "Five-Year Plans" in the late 1920s. These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. With seed capital unavailable because of international reaction to Communist policies, little international trade, and virtually no modern infrastructure, Stalin's government financed industrialization both by restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the kulaks. In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base. While it is generally agreed that the Soviet Union achieved significant levels of economic growth under Stalin, the precise rate of growth is disputed. It is not disputed, however, that these gains were accomplished at the cost of millions of lives. Official Soviet estimates stated the annual rate of growth at 13.9%; Russian and Western estimates gave lower figures of 5.8% and even 2.9%. Indeed, one estimate is that Soviet growth became temporarily much higher after Stalin's death. Soviet women under Stalin were the first generation of women able to give birth in the safety of a hospital, with access to prenatal care. Education was also an example of an increase in standard of living after economic development. The generation born during Stalin's rule was the first near-universally literate generation. Millions benefitted from mass literacy campaigns in the 1930s, and from workers training schemes. Transport links were improved and many new railways built.

y y

Religion y Stalin followed the position adopted by Lenin that religion was an opiate that needed to be removed in order to construct the ideal communist society. To this end, his government promoted atheism through special atheistic education in schools, massive amounts of anti-religious propaganda, the antireligious work of public institutions (especially the Society of the Godless), discriminatory laws, and also a terror campaign against religious believers. By the late 1930s it had become dangerous to be publicly associated with religion. Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction as a public institution: by 1939,

active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937 1938. Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted. Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including the Roman Catholic Church (including the Eastern Catholic Churches), Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. underwent ordeals similar to the Orthodox churches in other parts: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and other religious buildings were razed.

Calculating the number of victims

y Researchers before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union attempting to count the
number of people killed under Stalin's regime produced estimates ranging from 3 to 60 million. WORLD WAR II, 1939 1945 y During the early morning of 22 June 1941, Hitler broke the pact by implementing Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front. Although Stalin had received warnings from spies and his generals, he felt that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union until Germany had defeated Britain. In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.

Nobel Peace Prize nominations y In 1945, he was mentioned among seven candidates that were qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1948, he was officially nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Questionable tactics y y Part of 5 March 1940 memo from Lavrenty Beria to Stalin proposing execution of Polish officers After taking around 300,000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940, 25,700 Polish POWs were executed on 5 March 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, in what became known as the Katyn massacre. While Stalin personally told a Polish general they'd "lost track" of the officers in Manchuria, Polish railroad workers found the mass grave after the 1941 Nazi invasion. The massacre became a source of political controversy. In June 1941, weeks after the German invasion began, Stalin also directed employing a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them, and that partisans were to be set up in evacuated

y y

y y

areas. He also ordered the NKVD to murder around one hundred thousand political prisoners in areas where the Wermacht approached, while others were deported east. After the capture of Berlin, Soviet troops reportedly raped from tens of thousands to two million women, and 50,000 during and after the occupation of Budapest. In former Axis countries, such as Germany, Romania and Hungary, Red Army officers generally viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to pillaging and looting. Allied conferences on post-war Europe In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany. The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Premiere Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945. At the Potsdam Conference from July to August 1945, though Germany had surrendered months earlier, instead of withdrawing Soviet forces from Eastern European countries, Stalin had not moved those forces. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations.

POST-WAR ERA, 1945 1953 The Iron Curtain and the Eastern Bloc y After Soviet forces remained in Eastern and Central European countries, with the beginnings of communist puppet regimes in those countries, Churchill referred to the region as being behind an "Iron Curtain" of control from Moscow. The countries under Soviet control in Eastern and Central Europe were sometimes called the "Eastern bloc" or "Soviet Bloc". In an election, in June 1948, the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, the portion of Berlin not under Soviet control, cutting off all supply of food and other items. The blockade failed due to the unexpected massive aerial resupply campaign carried out by the Western powers known as the Berlin Airlift. In 1949, Stalin conceded defeat and ended the blockade. In Stalin's last year of life, one of his last major foreign policy initiatives was the 1952 Stalin Note for German reunification and Superpower disengagement from

Central Europe, but Britain, France, and the United States viewed this with suspicion and rejected the offer. North Korea y Contrary to America's policy which restrained armament (limited equipment was provided for infantry and police forces) to South Korea, Stalin extensively armed Kim Il Sung's North Korean army and air forces with military equipment (to include T-34/85 tanks) and "advisors" far in excess of those required for defensive purposes) in order to facilitate Kim's (a former Soviet Officer) aim of conquering the rest of the Korean peninsula. The North Korean Army struck in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, 25 June 1950, crossing the 38th parallel behind a firestorm of artillery, beginning their invasion of South Korea. During the Korean War, Soviet pilots flew Soviet aircraft from Chinese bases against United Nations aircraft defending South Korea. Post Cold War research in Soviet Archives has revealed that the Korean War was begun by Kim Il-sung with the express permission of Stalin, though this is disputed by North Korea.

"Doctors' plot"
y The "Doctors' plot" was a plot outlined by Stalin and Soviet officials in 1952 and 1953 whereby several doctors (over half of whom were Jewish) allegedly attempted to kill Soviet officials. Thereafter, in a December Politburo session, Stalin announced that "Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the United States (there you can become rich, bourgeois, etc.). They think they're indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists." To mobilize the Soviet people for his campaign, Stalin ordered TASS and Pravda to issue stories along with Stalin's alleged uncovering of a "Doctors Plot" to assassinate top Soviet leaders, including Stalin, in order to set the stage for show trials. The next month, Pravda published stories with text regarding the purported "Jewish bourgeois-nationalist" plotters. Nikita Khrushchev wrote that Stalin hinted him to incite Anti-Semitism in the Ukraine, telling him that "the good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews." Stalin also ordered falsely accused physicians to be tortured "to death". Regarding the origins of the plot, people who knew Stalin, such as Khrushchev, suggest that Stalin had long harbored negative sentiments toward Jews, and anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin's policies were further fueled by the exile of Leon Trotsky. In 1946, Stalin allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy." Some historians have argued that Stalin was also planning to send millions of Jews to four large newly built labor camps in Western Russia using a "Deportation

Commission" that would purportedly act to save Soviet Jews from an enraged Soviet population after the Doctors Plot trials. DEATH AND AFTERMATH y Stalin's health deteriorated by the end of World War II. He suffered from atherosclerosis from his heavy smoking. He suffered a mild stroke around the time of the Victory parade, and a severe heart attack in October 1945. On the early morning hours of 1 March 1953, after an all-night dinner and a movie Stalin arrived at his residence some 15 km west of Moscow centre with Nikita Khrushchev where he retired to his bedroom to sleep. At dawn, Stalin did not emerge from his room, having probably suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. Although his guards thought that it was odd for him not to rise at his usual time, they were under strict orders not to disturb him and left him alone the entire day. At around 10 p.m. he was discovered by Peter Lozgachev, who entered his bedroom to check up on him and recalled a horrifying scene of Stalin lying on the floor of his room wearing pajama bottoms and an undershirt with his clothes soaked in stale urine. A frightened Lozgachev asked Stalin what happened to him, but all he could get out of the Generalissimo was unintelligible responses that sounded like "Dzhh." Lozgachev frantically called a few party officials asking them to send good doctors. Lavrentiy Beria was informed and arrived a few hours afterwards, and the doctors only arrived in the early morning of 2 March in which they changed his bedclothes and tended to him. The bedridden Stalin died four days later, on 5 March 1953, at the age of 74, and was embalmed on 9 March. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. His body was preserved in Lenin's Mausoleum until 31 October 1961, when his body was removed from the Mausoleum and buried next to the Kremlin walls as part of the process of de-Stalinization.

NUREMBERG TRIALS
y The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, in 1945 46, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 24 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany, though several key architects of the war

(such as Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels) had committed suicide before the trials began. The initial trials were held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among them included the Doctors' Trial and the Judges' Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT; see the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for details on those trials.

ORIGIN y British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944, the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, being dissuaded from this only by talks with US leaders later in the war. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000 100,000 German staff officers. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill denounced the idea of "the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country" and that he'd rather be "taken out in the courtyard and shot" himself than to partake in any action. However, he also stated that war criminals must pay for their crimes and that in accordance with the Moscow Document which he himself had written, they should be tried at the places where the crimes were committed. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions "for political purposes . According to the minutes of a Roosevelt-Stalin meeting during the Yalta Conference, on February 4, 1945, at the Livadia Palace, President Roosevelt "said that he had been very much struck by the extent of German destruction in the Crimea and therefore he was more bloodthirsty in regard to the Germans than he had been a year ago, and he hoped that Marshal Stalin would again propose a toast to the execution of 50,000 officers of the German Army." US Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany; this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form. Later, details were leaked to the public, generating widespread protest. Roosevelt, aware of strong public disapproval, abandoned the plan, but did not adopt an alternate position on the matter.

The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the "Trial of European War Criminals" was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Following Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out. The trials were to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.

CREATION OF THE COURTS y On January 14, 1942, representatives from the nine occupying countries met in London to draft the Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes. At the meetings in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945), the three major wartime powers, the United Kingdom, United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics agreed on the format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France was also awarded a place on the tribunal. The legal basis for the trial was established by the London Charter, issued on August 8, 1945, which restricted the trial to "punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries." Some 200 German war crimes defendants were tried at Nuremberg, and 1,600 others were tried under the traditional channels of military justice. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was that defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Political authority for Germany had been transferred to the Allied Control Council which, having sovereign power over Germany, could choose to punish violations of international law and the laws of war. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, it did not have jurisdiction over crimes that took place before the outbreak of war on September 3, 1939.

THE MAIN TRIAL The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 18, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and six criminal organizations the leadership of the Nazi party, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the "General Staff and High Command," comprising several categories of senior military officers. The indictments were for: 1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace

2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace 3. War crimes 4. Crimes against humanity The 24 accused were, with respect to each charge, either indicted but acquitted (I), indicted and found guilty (G), or not charged (O), as listed below by defendant, charge, and eventual outcome:

Count Name 1 2 3 4 Penalty Notes

I O G G Death

Successor to Hess as Nazi Party Secretary. Sentenced to death in absentia. Remains found in Berlin in 1972 and dated to 1945.

Martin Bormann

I G G O 10 years Karl Dnitz

Leader of the Kriegsmarine from 1943, succeeded Raeder. Initiator of the Uboat campaign. Briefly became President of Germany followingHitler's death. Convicted of carrying out unrestricted submarine warfare in breach of the 1936 Second London Naval Treaty, but was not punished for that charge because the United States committed the same breach.

I O G G Death Hans Frank

Reich Law Leader 1933 1945 and GovernorGeneral of the General Government in occupied Poland 1939 1945. Expressed repentance.

I G G G Death Wilhelm Frick

Hitler's Minister of the Interior 1933 1943 and Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia 1943 1945. Authored the Nuremberg Race Laws.

I I I O Acquitted

Popular radio commentator; head of the news division of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Tried in place of Joseph Goebbels.

Hans Fritzsche

Hitler's Minister of Economics; succeeded Life Schacht as head of the Reichsbank. Released I G G G Imprisonment because of ill health on 16 May 1957. Died 31 May 1960. Walther Funk

G G G G Death

Hermann Gring

Reichsmarschall, Commander of the Luftwaffe 1935 1945, Chief of the 4-Year Plan 1936 1945, and original head of the Gestapo before turning it over to the SS in April 1934. Originally Hitler's designated successor and the second highest ranking Nazi official. By 1942, with his power waning, Gring fell out of favor and was replaced in the Nazi hierarchy by Himmler. Committed suicide the night before his execution.

Hitler's Deputy Fhrer until he flew to Life Scotland in 1941 in attempt to broker peace G G I I Imprisonment with Great Britain. After trial, committed to Spandau Prison; died in 1987. Rudolf Hess

G G G G Death Alfred Jodl

Wehrmacht Generaloberst, Keitel's subordinate and Chief of the OKW's Operations Division 1938 1945.

I O G G Death Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Highest surviving SS-leader. Chief of RSHA 1943 45, the Nazi organ made up of the intelligence service (SD), Secret State Police (Gestapo), Criminal Police (Kripo) and had overall command over the Einsatzgruppen.

G G G G Death

Head of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) 1938 1945.

Wilhelm Keitel

I I I ---Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach

Major Nazi industrialist. C.E.O. of Krupp A.G. 1912 45. Medically unfit for trial (died January 16, 1950). The prosecutors attempted to substitute his son Alfried (who ran Krupp for his father during most of the war) in the indictment, but the judges rejected this as being too close to trial. Alfried was tried in a separate Nuremberg trial for his use of slave labor, thus escaping the worst notoriety and possibly death.

I I I I ----

Head of DAF, The German Labour Front. Suicide on 25 October 1945, before the trial began.

Robert Ley

G G G G 15 years BaronKonstantin von Neurath

Minister of Foreign Affairs 1932 1938, succeeded by Ribbentrop. Later, Protector of Bohemia and Moravia 1939 43. Resigned in 1943 because of a dispute with Hitler. Released (ill health) 6 November 1954 after having a heart attack. Died 14 August 1956.

I I O O Acquitted Franz von Papen

Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and ViceChancellor under Hitler in 1933 1934. Ambassador to Austria 1934 38 and ambassador to Turkey1939 1944. Although acquitted at Nuremberg, von Papen was reclassified as a war criminal in 1947 by a German de-Nazification court, and sentenced to eight years' hard labour. He was acquitted following appeal after serving two years.

Commander In Chief of the Kriegsmarine from Life 1928 until his retirement in 1943, succeeded G G G O Imprisonment by Dnitz. Released (ill health) 26 September 1955. Died 6 November 1960. Erich Raeder

G G G G Death

Ambassador-Plenipotentiary 1935 1936. Ambassador to the United Kingdom 1936 1938. Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs 1938 1945

Joachim von Ribbentrop

G G G G Death

Racial theory ideologist. Later, Minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories 1941 1945.

Alfred Rosenberg

I I G G Death Fritz Sauckel

Gauleiter of Thuringia 1927 1945. Plenipotentiary of the Nazi slave labor program 1942 1945.

I I O O Acquitted Dr. Hjalmar Schacht

Prominent banker and economist. Pre-war president of the Reichsbank 1923 1930 & 1933 1938 and Economics Minister 1934 1937. Admitted to violating the Treaty of Versailles.

I O O G 20 years Baldur von Schirach

Head of the Hitlerjugend from 1933 to 1940, Gauleiter of Vienna 1940 1945. Expressed repentance.

I G G G Death Arthur SeyssInquart

Instrumental in the Anschluss and briefly Austrian Chancellor 1938. Deputy to Frank in Poland 1939 1940. Later, Reich Commissioner of the occupied Netherlands 1940 1945. Expressed repentance.

I I G G 20 Years Albert Speer

Hitler's favorite architect, close friend, and Minister of Armaments from 1942 until the end of the war. In this capacity, he was ultimately responsible for the use of slave laborers from the occupied territories in armaments production. Expressed repentance.

I O O G Death

Gauleiter of Franconia 1922 1940. Publisher of the weekly newspaper, Der Strmer.

Julius Streicher

y y

Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences, and three were acquitted. Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Hermann Gring committed suicide the night before the execution and Martin Bormann was not present when convicted (he had, unbeknownst to the Allies, committed suicide in Berlin in 1945). The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged. The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines document which was created as a result of the trial. The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors' Trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code to control future trials involving human subjects, a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation.

LEGACY y The creation of the IMT was followed by trials of lesser Nazi officials and the trials of Nazi doctors, who performed experiments on people in prison camps. It served as the model for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East which tried Japanese officials for crimes against peace and against humanity. It also served as the model for the Eichmann trial and for present-day courts at The Hague, for trying crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, and at Arusha, for trying the people responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. The Nuremberg trials had a great influence on the development of international criminal law. The Conclusions of the Nuremberg trials served as models for: The Genocide Convention, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, the Nuremberg Principles, 1950, the Convention on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, 1968, the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 1949; its supplementary protocols, 1977 The International Law Commission, acting on the request of the United Nations General Assembly, produced in 1950 the report Principles of International Law Recognized in

y y

the Charter of the Nrnberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II[55]). See Nuremberg Principles. The influence of the tribunal can also be seen in the proposals for a permanent international criminal court, and the drafting of international criminal codes, later prepared by the International Law Commission.

ESTABLISHMENT OF A PERMANENT INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (ICC) The Nuremberg trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent international criminal court, eventually leading over fifty years later to the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. CRITICISM y Critics of the Nuremberg trials argued that the charges against the defendants were only defined as "crimes" after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of "victors' justice". As Biddiss noted "...the Nuremberg Trial continues to haunt us... It is a question also of the weaknesses and strengths of the proceedings themselves. The undoubted flaws rightly continue to trouble the thoughtful." Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. "(Chief U.S. prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his highgrade lynching party in Nuremberg," he wrote. "I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretence that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas." Jackson, in a letter discussing the weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told U.S. President Harry S. Truman that the Allies themselves "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest." Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled," he wrote. "Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time. U.S. Deputy Chief Counsel Abraham Pomerantz resigned in protest at the low caliber of the judges assigned to try the industrial war criminals such as those at I.G. Farben.

The validity of the court has been questioned for a variety of reasons:

The defendants were not allowed to appeal or affect the selection of judges. A. L. Goodhart, Professor at Oxford, opposed the view that, because the judges were appointed by the victors, the Tribunal was not impartial and could not be regarded as a court in the true sense. He wrote:[66] Attractive as this argument may sound in theory, it ignores the fact that it runs counter to the administration of law in every country. If it were true then no spy could be given a legal trial, because his case is always heard by judges representing the enemy country. Yet no one has ever argued that in such cases it was necessary to call on neutral judges. The prisoner has the right to demand that his judges shall be fair, but not that they shall be neutral. As Lord Writ has pointed out, the same principle is applicable to ordinary criminal law because 'a burglar cannot complain that he is being tried by a jury of honest citizens.' One of the charges, brought against Keitel, Jodl, and Ribbentrop included conspiracy to commit aggression against Poland in 1939. The Secret Protocols of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939, proposed the partition of Poland between the Germans and the Soviets (which was subsequently executed in September 1939); however, Soviet leaders were not tried for being part of the same conspiracy. Instead, the Tribunal falsely proclaimed the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact to be a forgery. Moreover, Allied Powers Britain and Soviet Union were not tried for preparing and conducting the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran and the Winter War, respectively. The court agreed to relieve the Soviet leadership from attending these trials as war criminals in order to hide their crimes against war civilians, war crimes that were committed by their army that included "carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later." This "exclusion request" was initiated by the Soviets and subsequently approved by the court's administration. The trials were conducted under their own rules of evidence; the tu quoque defense was removed; and some claim the entire spirit of the assembly was "victor's justice". The Charter of the International Military Tribunal permitted the use of normally inadmissible "evidence". Article 19 specified that "The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence... and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value". Article 21 of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) Charter stipulated: The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. It shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United [Allied] Nations, including acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and the records and findings of military and other Tribunals of any of the United [Allied] Nations.

KOREAN WAR
INTRODUCTION
y

y y

y y

y y

During the world war of 1939-45, the future of the Japanese empire was decided at Allied summit meetings. In the short term, pending the return of Korean independence, Korea, a Japanese colony since 1910, was to be occupied north of the 38th parallel by Soviet Russia. To the south, a United States military administration under the direction of General Douglas MacArthur would control the area from its headquarters in Tokyo. In the North, the Soviets backed a Stalinist regime under their client Kim Il-sung and created the North Korean Peoples' Army, equipped with Russian tanks and artillery. In the South, the chaotic political situation resulted in an American-backed administration under the presidency of Syngman Rhee, who openly declared aim was the imposition of national unity by force. As a result of this stance, the American-trained South Korean army was limited to a lightly armed side, lacking tanks, combat aircraft and all but a small amount of field artillery. The North Koreans advanced rapidly south, aiming to take the vital port of Pusan. After several years of increasingly bloody frontier incidents along the 38th parallel, the Republic of Korea was invaded by the North Korean Peoples' Army on 25 June 1950. Despite earlier indications, the Pentagon was caught off-guard. As the North Koreans swept south, overwhelming all opposition, the US called on the Security Council to invoke the United Nations Charter and brand the North Koreans as aggressors. This was done and member states were called on to send in military assistance. The first American troops were then sent in to stiffen resistance against the invader. The British government responded at once and elements of the Far East Fleet were soon in action along the Korean coast, together with ships of Commonwealth navies. However, the North Koreans still advanced rapidly south, aiming to take the vital port of Pusan. The American troops hurriedly sent from occupation duties in Japan fared badly against superior North Korean troops, but General Walton Walker, commanding the 8th United States Army in Korea (EUSAK), rallied his forces and held the Pusan bridgehead as reinforcements began to arrive. In mid-September, General MacArthur brought off a masterstroke by landing two divisions 240km (150 miles) in the enemy rear at the port of Inchon. Their communications cut, and under heavy aerial bombardment, the North Koreans broke and fled back north; MacArthur ordered a hot pursuit which led across the 38th parallel and deep into North Korea. As the victorious UN forces drew near to the Manchurian border, there were ominous signals from Peking that communist China would intervene to defend its territory. In mid-October, MacArthur met President Harry Truman on Wake Island in their first encounter to assure him that a massive UN offensive was about to conclude the war

victoriously by Christmas. No sooner had this been launched in November than the Chinese unleashed their armies. The UN forces recoiled in disorder and, by the new year, were defending a line well to the south of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Morale was low but the new field commander, General Ridgway, revived his heterogeneous command and advanced slowly north in the spring of 1951. By mid-April, the allies were back in the area of the 38th parallel when the Chinese launched their spring offensive. The line stabilised in the general area of the 38th parallel and the remaining two years of fighting consisted of near-static operations as both sides fought from heavily fortified positions, using artillery, mines and wire to deny the enemy access to strategically important ground. Throughout the war, air power was decisive. The North Korean air force was driven from the skies by US Air Force, Navy and Marines, using their superior equipment and training. Heavy bombers razed the cities and industrial plants of North Korea. Continuous attacks on the transport system forced the Chinese to rely on the packhorse for much of their logistical support. A new phase of air war opened when American B-29 bombers and their fighter escorts were challenged by Russian-built MiG-15 fighters flown by Chinese airmen. The MiG15's outflew first-generation American jet fighters until the introduction of the sweptwing F-86 Sabre tipped the balance. In the world's first supersonic air combats, the Americans prevailed. The allies achieved total naval supremacy when the North Korean navy's torpedo boats were blown out of the water by UN firepower. For the rest of the war, American, British, Commonwealth and other allied ships maintained a tight blockade on North Korea. In addition, naval aviation played a leading role in air support of the army on the ground. In mid-1951, with the land battle in stalemate, both sides agreed to go to the conference table and armistice talks began. They dragged on for two years. The main haggling point was the future of the tens of thousands of communist prisoners held in camps on Koje Island off the coast of South Korea. While the communist negotiators were adamant that all were to be returned to their country of origin, thousands of prisoners were unwilling to be repatriated. There were several great mutinies in the Koje camps before a satisfactory formula enabled those who wished to be repatriated to go home and for asylum to be granted to those who wished otherwise. In July 1953, a great calm descended over the battlefields and in Operation Big Switch, thousands of former prisoners on each side were returned. A Demilitarised Zone or DMZ was established on the border. Both sides withdrew from their fighting positions, and a UN commission was set up to supervise the armistice.

THE AFTERMATH

y y

No one knows exactly how many people died in this war. In a sense it was a civil war fought out with foreign participation on both sides. It was the first military test of the United Nations and also the last martial adventure of the old Commonwealth. The American Department of Defence acknowledges that almost 40,000 of its servicemen died, either in battle or of other causes. British casualties were 1,078 killed in action, 2,674 wounded and 1,060 missing or taken prisoner. It was the first military test of the United Nations and also the last martial adventure of the old Commonwealth. The true casualty figures for the North and South Koreans and Chinese will never be known. It is estimated that some 46,000 South Korean soldiers were killed and over 100,000 wounded. The Chinese are estimated by the Pentagon as having lost over 400,000 killed (including Mao Tse-tung's son) and 486,000 wounded, with over 21,000 captured. The North Koreans lost about 215,000 killed, 303,000 wounded and over 101,000 captured or missing. Since 1953, the Republic of Korea has transformed into a modern state. In the North, however, the Stalinist regime created by Kim Il-sung is only now beginning to move out of its hermit state. The economy is in ruins and famine stalks the land. It is too early to say if the tentative moves towards reconciliation will result in attainment of the unity so deeply desired by many Koreans.

MAO ZEDONG
MAO'S EARLY LIFE y On December 26, 1893, a son was born to the Mao family, wealthy farmers in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China. They named the boy Mao Zedong. The child studied Confucian classics at the village school for five years, but left at the age of 13 to help out full-time on the farm. Rebellious and probably spoiled, young Mao had been expelled from several schools and even ran away from home for several days.

EDUCATION AND INTRODUCTION TO MARXISM y Mao moved to Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, to continue his education. He spent 6 months in 1911 and 1912 as a soldier in the barracks at Changsha, during the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Between 1913 and 1918, Mao studied at the Teachers' Training School, where he began to embrace ever more revolutionary ideas. He was fascinated by the 1917 Russian Revolution, and by the 4th century BCE Chinese philosophy called Legalism.

After graduation, Mao followed his professor Yang Changji to Beijing, where he took a job at the Beijing University library. His supervisor, Li Dazhao, was a cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party, and greatly influenced Mao's developing revolutionary ideas.

GATHERING POWER y He read a translation of The Communist Manifesto that year, and became a committed Marxist. Six years later, the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek massacred at least 5,000 communists in Shanghai. This was the start of China's Civil War. That fall, Mao led the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Changsha against the Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT crushed Mao's peasant army, killing 90% of them and forcing the survivors out into the countryside, where they rallied more peasants to their cause. In June, 1928, the KMT took Beijing and was recognized as the official government of China by foreign powers. Mao and the Communists continued to set up peasant soviets in the southern Hunan and Jiangxi Provinces, however. He was laying the foundations of Maoism.

MAO AND THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR y In 1931, Mao was elected Chairman of the Soviet Republic of China, in Jiangxi Province. Mao ordered a reign of terror against landlords; perhaps more than 200,000 were tortured and killed. His Red Army, made up mostly of poorly-armed but fanatical peasants, numbered 45,000. Under increasing KMT pressure, Mao was demoted from his leadership role. Chiang Kaishek's troops surrounded the Red Army in the mountains of Jiangxi, forcing them to make a desperate escape in 1934.

THE LONG MARCH AND JAPANESE OCCUPATION y About 85,000 Red Army troops and followers retreated from Jiangxi, and started walking the 6,000 km arc to the northern province of Shaanxi. Beset by freezing weather, dangerous mountain paths, unbridged rivers, and attacks by warlords and the KMT, only 7,000 of the communists made it to Shaanxi in 1936. This Long March cemented Mao Zedong's position as leader of the Chinese Communists. He was able to rally the troops despite their dire situation.

In 1937, Japan invaded China. The Chinese Communists and the KMT halted their civil war to meet this new threat, which lasted through Japan's 1945 defeat in World War II.

CIVIL WAR RESUMES AND THE FOUNDING OF THE PRC y Even as he led the fight against the Japanese, Mao was planning to seize power from his erstwhile allies, the KMT. Mao codified his ideas in a number of pamphlets, including On Guerrilla Warfare and On Protracted War. After World War II ended, the Chinese armies started to fight again in earnest. The turning point was the 1948 Siege of Changchun, in which the Red Army, now called the People's Liberation Army (PLA), defeated the Kuomintang's army in Changchun, Jilin Province. By October 1, 1949, Mao felt confident enough to declare the establishment of the People's Republic of China. On December 10, the PLA besieged the final KMT stronghold at Chengdu, Sichuan. On that day, Chiang Kai-shek and other KMT officials fled the mainland for Taiwan.

FIVE YEAR PLAN AND THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD y From his new home next to the Forbidden City, Mao directed radical reforms in China. Landlords were executed, perhaps as many as 2-5 million across the country, and their land redistributed to poor peasants. Mao's "Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries" claimed at least 800,000 additional lives, mostly former KMT members, intellectuals and businessmen. In the Three-Anti/Five-Anti Campaigns of 1951-52, Mao directed the targeting of wealthy people and suspected capitalists, who were subjected to public "struggle sessions." Many who survived the initial beatings and humiliation later committed suicide. Between 1953 and 1958, Mao launched the First Five-Year Plan, intending to make China an industrial power. Buoyed by his initial success, Chairman Mao launched the Second Five-Year Plan, called the "Great Leap Forward," in January of 1958. He urged farmers to smelt iron in their yards, rather than tending the crops. The results were disastrous; an estimated 30-40 million Chinese starved in the Great Famine of 1958-60.

MAO'S FOREIGN POLICIES y Shortly after Mao took power in China, he sent the "People's Volunteer Army" in to the Korean War to fight alongside the North Koreans against the South Koreans and

United Nations forces. The PVA saved Kim Il-Sung's army from being overrun, resulting in a stalemate that continues to this day. In 1951, Mao also sent the PLA into Tibet to "liberate" it from the Dalai Lama's rule. y By 1959, China's relationship with the Soviet Union had deteriorated markedly. The two communist powers disagreed on the wisdom of the Great Leap Forward, China's nuclear ambitions, and the brewing Sino-Indian War (1962). By 1962, China and the USSR had cut off relations with one another.

MAO FALLS FROM GRACE y In January of 1962, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held a "Conference of the Seven Thousand" in Beijing. Conference chair Liu Shaoqi harshly criticized the Great Leap Forward, and by implication, Mao Zedong. Mao was pushed aside within the internal power structure of the CCP; moderate pragmatists Liu and Deng Xiaoping freed the peasants from communes and imported wheat from Australia and Canada to feed the famine survivors. For several years, Mao served only as a figurehead in the Chinese government. He spent that time plotting a return to power, and revenge on Liu and Deng. Mao would use the specter of capitalist tendencies among the powerful, as well as the might and credulity of young people, to take power once again.

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION y In August of 1966, the 73-year-old Mao made a speech at the Plenum of the Communist Central Committee. He called for the youth of the country to take back the revolution from the rightists. These young "Red Guards" would do the dirty work in Mao's Cultural Revolution, destroying the "Four Olds" - old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. While the nation's students were busily destroying ancient artwork and texts, burning temples and beating intellectuals to death, Mao managed to purge both Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping from the Party leadership In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution complete, although it continued through his death in 1976. Later phases were directed by Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) and her cronies, known as the "Gang of Four."

MAO'S FAILING HEALTH AND DEATH

Throughout the 1970s, Mao's health steadily deteriorated. He may have been suffering from Parkinson's disease or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), in addition to heart and lung trouble brought on by a lifetime of smoking. By July of 1976, when the country was in crisis due to the Great Tangshan Earthquake, the 82-year-old Mao was confined to a hospital bed in Beijing. He suffered two major heart attacks early in September, and died on September 9, 1976 after being removed from life support.

MAO ZEDONG'S LEGACY y After Mao's death, the moderate pragmatist branch of the Chinese Communist Party took power and ousted the leftist revolutionaries. Deng Xiaoping, now thoroughly rehabilitated, led the country toward an economic policy of capitalist-style growth and export wealth. Madame Mao and the other Gang of Four members were arrested and tried, essentially for all of the crimes associated with the Cultural Revolution. Mao's legacy today is a complicated one. He is known as the "Founding Father of Modern China," and serves to inspire 21st century rebellions like the Nepali and Indian Maoist movements. On the other hand, his leadership caused more deaths among his own people than that of Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler. Within the Chinese Communist Party under Deng, Mao was declared to be "70% correct" in his policies. However, Deng also said that the Great Famine was "30% natural disaster, 70% human error." Nonetheless, Mao Thought continues to guide policies to this day.

TIBET
y Tibet has been occupied and ruled over by China and the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) since 1951 in a calculated and systematic strategy aimed at the destruction of their national and cultural identities" (14th Dalai Lama, 1997). This has often been described by the Tibetan people as a cultural Eight years of occupation and repression led to the Tibetan Uprising of 1959, in which Tibetans rebelled in an attempt to overthrow the Chinese government; instead, the uprising led to the fleeing of HH the Fourteenth Dalai Lama into India, where he has lived in exile ever since. A few hundred Tibetans initially followed the 14th Dalai Lama into exile, and since then hundreds of thousands have followed. A more detailed history of Chinese-Tibetan relations is presented below. After the death of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1933, political upheaval characterized much of Tibet until a new religious candidate could be found. Deciding that power should be temporarily shared by a lama acting as regent, Reting, and a lay chief minister, the

Tibetan government was sieged both by internal and external quests for control over the region. The latter in the form of China sought to "liberate" Tibetans from their "serf-like" existence and to ultimately "return" Tibet to the motherland. Aware that they would eventually be forced to deal with China, Tibetan officials attempted to maintain negotiations while denying requests. As the Chinese army advanced towards political Tibet, Tibetan religious leaders urged that state power be transferred to the young Dalai Lama and that government officials relocate to the Indian border. In 1951, the Dalai Lama was forced to accept the terms of the Seventeen Point Agreement, forcing Tibet to return to Chinese jurisdiction while maintaining some level of autonomy, including religious freedom However, throughout the 1950s, relations between Tibetan Buddhism and Communist China worsened as monasteries continued to be places of resistance and potential shelter for rebels. With increased Chinese negativity towards religion and allegations of disappearing lamas, the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. After the imprisonment of the Panchen Lama for a dissenting report about the state of Tibetan affairs, China no longer felt restrained by its earlier promises and was free to enforce its policies. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) demonstrated this through the destruction of many symbols of Tibetan religious life, including temples and monasteries. Furthermore, religious figures and other educated individuals were forced into reeducation and severely maltreated. Although Chinese policies in the 1980s tried to revert some of the destruction, the damage to Tibetan culture was already done. In the late 1980s, tensions between Tibet and China increased until violence climaxed in early 1989 with the deaths of many protesting Tibetans by police fire. Other demonstrations for the exiled Dalai Lama and pro-democracy (like the demonstration in Tiananmen Square in Beijing) received international attention and made Tibetan religious devotion tantamount to political views in the eyes of the Chinese government. In an attempt to curb instability in Tibet during the 1990s and 2000s, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) pushed for the economic development of the region and campaigned for the removal of images of the Dalai Lama from public areas and many private residences. Furthermore, the Chinese government re-hauled educational texts for Tibetan students, ultimately promoting Chinese ideologies in the Tibetan language.

AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

y The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955 1968) refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. The emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from oppression by white Americans. The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments,

businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations that highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955 1956) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities. y Noted legislative achievements during this phase of the Civil Rights Movement were passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964, that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that restored and protected voting rights; the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, that dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional European groups; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and across the country young people were inspired to action.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POST-RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD: y Racial segregation. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains. Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality. Disfranchisement. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more inaccessible to blacks. Black voters were forced off the voting rolls. The number of African American voters dropped dramatically, and they no longer were able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans. Exploitation. Increased economic oppression of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination. Violence. Individual, police, organizational, and mass racial violence against blacks (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in California).

y y

MASS ACTION REPLACING LITIGATION y The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation in the court system that typified the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the 20th Century broadened after Brown to a strategy that emphasized "direct action" primarily boycotts, sitins, Freedom Rides, marches and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. This mass action approach typified the movement from 1960 to 1968. Churches, the centers of their communities, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses, mobilized volunteers to participate in broadbased actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges.

In 1952, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), led by T. R. M. Howard, a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter, organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Nashville which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the White Citizens' Councils.

BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 1954 y Spring 1951 was the year in which great turmoil was felt amongst Black students in reference to Virginia state's educational system. At the time in Prince Edward County, Moton High School was segregated and students had decided to take matters into their own hands to fight against two things: the overpopulated school premises and the unsuitable conditions in their school. This particular behavior coming from Black people in the South was most likely unexpected and inappropriate as White people had expectations for Blacks to act in a subordinate manner. Moreover, some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not accept the NAACP's demands, the NAACP automatically joined them in their battle against school segregation. This became one of the five cases that made up what is known today as Brown v. Board of Education. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision regarding the case called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the plaintiffs charged that the education of black children in separate public schools from their white counterparts was unconstitutional. The opinion of the Court stated that the "segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group." The Montgomery Improvement Association created to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott managed to keep the boycott going for over a year until a federal court order required Montgomery to desegregate its buses. The success in Montgomery made its leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the highly successful Tallahassee, Florida, boycott of 1956 1957.

SIT-INS, 1960 y The Civil Rights Movement received an infusion of energy with a student sit-in at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina. On February 1, 1960, four students Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans.

The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter. These protesters were encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in. The sit-in soon inspired other sit-ins in Richmond, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C. in 1941 to support demands for elimination of employment discrimination in defense industries; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802 barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the order. Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the second march, which they proposed in 1962. The Kennedy administration applied great pressure on Randolph and King to call it off but without success. The march was held on August 28, 1963.

Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals:
     

meaningful civil rights laws, a massive federal works program, full and fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote, and adequate integrated education.

Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham. y y National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. While the Kennedy administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had the votes in Congress to do it. But when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the new President Lyndon Johnson decided to use his influence in Congress to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.

MEMPHIS, KING ASSASSINATION AND THE POOR PEOPLE'S MARCH, 1968:

Rev. James Lawson invited King to Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1968 to support a strike by sanitation workers. They had launched a campaign for union representation after two workers were accidentally killed on the job. A day after delivering his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Riots broke out in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that followed, notably in Chicago, Baltimore, and in Washington, D.C. The damage done in many cities destroyed black businesses.

The day before King's funeral, April 8, Coretta Scott King and three of the King children led 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis, holding signs that read, "Honor King: End Racism" and "Union Justice Now". National Guardsmen lined the streets, perched on M-48 tanks, bayonets mounted, with helicopters circling overhead. On April 9 Mrs. King led another 150,000 in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta. Her dignity revived courage and hope in many of the Movement's members, cementing her place as the new leader in the struggle for racial equality.

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

y y At the beginning of September 1962, U-2 spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was building surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites. There was also an increase in the number of Soviet ships arriving in Cuba which the United States government feared were carrying new supplies of weapons. President John F. Kennedy complained to the Soviet Union about these developments and warned them that the United States would not accept offensive weapons (SAMs were considered to be defensive) in Cuba. As the Cubans now had SAM installations they were in a position to shoot down U-2 spy-planes. Kennedy was in a difficult situation. Elections were to take place for the United States Congress in two month's time. The public opinion polls showed that his own ratings had fallen to their lowest point since he became president. In his first two years of office a combination of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats in Congress had blocked much of Kennedy's proposed legislation. The polls suggested that after the elections he would have even less support in Congress. Kennedy feared that any trouble over Cuba would lose the Democratic Party even more votes, as it would remind voters of the Bay of Pigs disaster where the CIA had tried to oust Fidel Castro from power. On 27th September, a CIA agent in Cuba overheard Castro's personal pilot tell another man in a bar that Cuba now had nuclear weapons. U-2 spy-plane photographs also showed that unusual activity was taking place at San Cristobal. However, it was not until 15th October that photographs were taken that revealed that the Soviet Union was placing long range missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy's first reaction to the information about the missiles in Cuba was to call a meeting to discuss what should be done. Robert S McNamara, Secretary of State for Defense, suggested the formation of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Fourteen men attended the meeting and included military leaders,

experts on Latin America, representatives of the CIA, cabinet ministers and personal friends whose advice Kennedy valued. Over the next few days they were to meet several times. During their discussions they considered several different strategies for dealing with the crisis. They included the following: (1) Do nothing. The United States should ignore the missiles in Cuba. The United States had military bases in 127 different countries including Cuba. The United States also had nuclear missiles in several countries close to the Soviet Union. It was therefore only right that the Soviet Union should be allowed to place missiles in Cuba. (2) Negotiate. The United States should offer the Soviet Union a deal. In return for the Soviet Union dismantling her missiles in Cuba, the United States would withdraw her nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy. (3) Invasion. Send United States troops to Cuba to overthrow Castro's government. The missiles could then be put out of action and the Soviet Union could no longer use Cuba as a military base. (4) Blockade of Cuba. Use the United States Navy to stop military equipment reaching Cuba from the Soviet Union. (5) Bomb Missile Bases. Carry out conventional air-strikes against missiles and other military targets in Cuba. (6) Nuclear Weapons. Use nuclear weapons against Cuba and/or the Soviet Union. When discussing these strategies. President Kennedy and his advisers had to take into consideration how the Soviet Union and Cuba would react to decisions made by the United States. y At the first meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the CIA and other military advisers explained the situation. After hearing what they had to say, the general feeling of the meeting was for an air-attack on the missile sites. Remembering the poor advice the CIA had provided before the Bay of Pigs invasion, John F. Kennedy decided to wait and instead called for another meeting to take place that evening. By this time several of the men were having doubts about the wisdom of a bombing raid, fearing that it would lead to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The committee was now so divided that a firm decision could not be made. The Executive Committee of the National Security Council argued amongst themselves for the next two days. The CIA and the military were still in favor of a bombing raid and/or an invasion. However, the majority of the committee gradually began to favor a naval blockade of Cuba.

As well as imposing a naval blockade, Kennedy also told the air-force to prepare for attacks on Cuba and the Soviet Union. The army positioned 125,000 men in Florida and was told to wait for orders to invade Cuba. If the Soviet ships carrying weapons for Cuba did not turn back or refused to be searched, a war was likely to begin. Kennedy also promised his military advisers that if one of the U-2 spy planes were fired upon he would give orders for an attack on the Cuban SAM missile sites. On October 24, President John F. Kennedy was informed that Soviet ships had stopped just before they reached the United States ships blockading Cuba. That evening Nikita Khrushchev sent an angry note to Kennedy accusing him of creating a crisis to help the Democratic Partywin the forthcoming election. On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy another letter. In this he proposed that the Soviet Union would be willing to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the United States that they would not invade Cuba. The next day a second letter from Khrushchev arrived demanding that the United States remove their nuclear bases in Turkey. While the president and his advisers were analyzing Khrushchev's two letters, news came through that a U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba. The leaders of the military, reminding Kennedy of the promise he had made, argued that he should now give orders for the bombing of Cuba. Kennedy refused and instead sent a letter to Khrushchev accepting the terms of his first letter. Khrushchev agreed and gave orders for the missiles to be dismantled. Eight days later the elections for Congress took place. The Democrats increased their majority and it was estimated that Kennedy would now have an extra twelve supporters in Congress for his policies. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first and only nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The event appeared to frighten both sides and it marked a change in the development of the Cold War. Some of the direct consequences of the crisis include the following:

(1) The two sides established a direct communications link that became known as the Hot Line. It was hoped that this would help prevent dangerous confrontations such as the Cuban Missile Crisis arising again. (2) Three months after the Cuban Missile Crisis the United States secretly removed all its nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy. (3) A Test Ban Treaty was signed between the two countries in August 1963. The treaty prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. (4) The 1,113 prisoners captured during the Bay of Pigs invasion were exchanged by Castro for $60 million in food, drugs, medicine and cash. (5) The Soviet Union became determined to have a nuclear capability that was equal to the United States. This was achieved by 1972.

(6) China accused the Soviet Union of being a 'paper-tiger' and claimed to be the true leader of the Communist movement. The split between theSoviet Union and China became wider. (7) The United States became convinced that the Soviet Union would not go to war over another communist country. It has been argued that this encouraged the United States to help attempts to overthrow socialist and communist governments in Vietnam, Nicaragua and Grenada.

SPACE RACE
y y y y y y The beginning of rocket technology towards the end of the 2nd world war During World War II, Germany attacked Great Britain from across the English Channel using V-2 rockets developed by their brilliant rocket scientists and engineers. But by the end of the war, many of the German rocket engineers decided to work for the Soviet Union. This resulted in the United States and the Soviet Union benefiting from the expertise of these German rocket scientists in their quest for space superiority. The first space flights planned were in the form of unmanned satellite launches. The space race began during the 1950s when a group of scientists (at the International Council of Scientific Unions) set a goal of putting a satellite into space as a part of their agenda for the year 1957-58 which was named as the International Geophysical Year. The United States set out in 1955 to meet this goal using Navy research missiles, in an effort known as Project Vanguard. On Oct. 4, 1957, the Space Age officially began when the Soviets launched the first orbiting satellite Sputnik 1. A month later, on November 3, the Soviet Union set another record when it launched Sputnik II with the first living creature in space: a dog named Laika. Sputnik struck fear into the hearts of Cold War Americans. On January 31, 1958 the United States countered with Explorer I, its first satellite. The next level in the space race was the sending of a human into orbit around the earth. The U.S. began its Mercury program with an unmanned 18 minute flight on January 31, 1961 that carried Ham the chimpanzee. The Soviets were not behind. On April 12, 1961 Yuri Alekseyvich Gagarin became the first human in space when he completed one orbit in a 108 minute space flight aboard Vostok I. While the US attempted several times to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Soviets, they failed. Their last effort was their last Mercury mission that carried L. Gordon Cooper, Jr. for 34 hours, 19 minutes, and 49 seconds in twenty-two orbits. The next round of competition involved multi - person flights. The United States announced its Gemini program of two-person capsules in 1961.

y y y y y y y

y y

y y y

But the Soviet capsule, Voskhod I became the first multiperson capsule, launched on October 12, 1964 with Vladimir M. Komarov, Konstantin P. Feoktistov, and Boris B. Yegorov aboard. They were also the first to land their capsule on the ground. And in March 1965, Alexei A. Leonov made the first "walk" in space. Meanwhile, Gemini 3, launched on March 23, 1965, was the first manned, multiperson spaceflight of the United States. On March 16, 1966, the world's first space docking was performed by the pilots of Gemini 8, Neil A. Armstrong and David R. Scott. The United States and Soviet Union now went ahead with their plans to achieve the final goal in the space race: landing a person on the moon. The U.S. named their program Apollo while the U.S.S.R. entitled theirs Soyuz (Union). Though the Test flights of both programs encountered tragedy, NASA launched the legendary Apollo 11 mission carrying Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins, on July 16, 1969. At 10:56 pm on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to step on the moon with these words: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION y

y

y
y

y y

The International Space Station (ISS) is a habitable, artificial satellite (space station) in low Earth orbit. The ISS serves as a research laboratory that has a microgravity environment in which crews conduct experiments in many fields including biology, human biology, physics, astronomy and meteorology. The station has a unique environment for the testing of the spacecraft systems that will be required for missions to the Moon and Mars. The station is expected to remain in operation until at least 2020, and potentially to 2028. The ISS can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. The ISS is operated by Expedition crews, and has been continuously staffed since 2 November 2000 an uninterrupted human presence in space for the past 11 years and 41 days. The ISS is a joint project between the five participating space agencies, the American NASA, the Russian RKA, the Japanese JAXA, the European ESA, and the Canadian CSA. China is not an ISS partner, and no Chinese nationals have been aboard. China has its own contemporary manned space program, project 921, and collaborates with Russia, the European Union (EU), Brazil, Canada, Nigeria, and others in manned and unmanned space projects.

CHANGE IN ATTITUDE

y y

The early 1970s were rounded out by several more manned Moon landings, which featured expanded tasks including more sample returns, experiments, and extended EVA's with a lunar rover. The USSR continued for time with their N1 rocket, as well as more Soyuz flights to their Salyut stations. Unmanned spacecraft were in the limelight as well, with the USSR launching unmanned lunar sample return missions and probes to Mars and Venus. The US launched probes to Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond, as well as launching Skylab, a orbital space station. Together, the US and Soviet conducted an orbital rendezvous by manned spacecraft in 1975. After the completion of the space race, it became clear that both space-faring nations might need to cooperate in some manner. To this effect, a joint mission with the Soviet Union was proposed, the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. An Apollo spacecraft carried a special docking module that would enable it to link up with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft and transfer crewmembers. In 1975, an Apollo spacecraft carrying three astronauts rendezvoused and docked with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft containing two cosmonauts. The crews spent two days together conducting experiments. The flight demonstrated that the two countries could work together in space and set the groundwork for cooperation in the Shuttle/Mir program and in building the International Space Station two decades later. By the end of the 1970s, both were working on Space Shuttles and launching science missions at a fever pitch.

COLUMBIA DISASTER y The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in the death of all seven crew members. Debris from Columbia fell to Earth in Texas along a path stretching from Trophy Club to Tyler, as well as into parts of Louisiana. The loss of Columbia was a result of damage sustained during launch when a piece of foam insulation the size of a small briefcase broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank under the aerodynamic forces of launch. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's recommendations addressed both technical and organizational issues. Space Shuttle flight operations were delayed for two years, similar to the delay following the Challenger accident.

y y

y y

Construction of the International Space Station was put on hold, and for 29 months the station relied entirely on the Russian Federal Space Agency for resupply until Shuttle flights resumed with STS-114 and 41 months for crew rotation until STS-121.

ISRAEL PALESTINE CONFLICT

In the 19th century the land of Palestine was inhabited by a multicultural population approximately 86 percent Muslim, 10 percent Christian, and 4 percent Jewish living in peace. ZIONISM y In the late 1800s a group in Europe decided to colonize the land of Palestine. Known as Zionists, they represented an extremist minority of the Jewish population. Their goal was to create a Jewish homeland, and they considered locations in Africa and the Americas, before settling on Palestine. At first, this immigration created no problems. However, as more and more Zionists immigrated to Palestine many with the express wish of taking over the land for a Jewish state the indigenous population became increasingly alarmed. Eventually, fighting broke out, with escalating waves of violence. Hitler's rise to power, combined with Zionist activities to sabotage efforts to place Jewish refugees in western countries, led to increased Jewish immigration to Palestine, and conflict grew.

UN PARTITION PLAN y y Finally, in 1947 the United Nations decided to intervene. However, rather than adhering to the principle of self-determination of peoples, in which the people themselves create their own state and system of government, the UN chose to revert to the medieval strategy whereby an outside power divides up other people s land. Under considerable Zionist pressure, the UN recommended giving away 55% of Palestine to a Jewish state despite the fact that this group represented only about 30% of the total population, and owned only about 7% of the land.

1949 WAR y While it is widely reported that the resulting war eventually included five Arab armies, less well known is the fact that throughout this war Zionist forces outnumbered all Arab and Palestinian combatants combined often by a factor of two to three.

y y

y y

Moreover, Arab armies did not invade Israel virtually all battles were fought on land that was to have been the Palestinian state. It is significant to note that Arab armies entered the conflict only after Zionist forces had committed 16 massacres, including the grisly massacre of over 100 men, women, and children at Deir Yassin. By the end of the war, Israel had conquered 78 percent of Palestine; three-quarters of a million Palestinians had been made refugees; over 500 towns and villages had been obliterated. A new map was drawn up, in which every city; river and hillock received a new, Hebrew name, as all vestiges of the Palestinian culture were to be erased. For decades Israel denied the existence of this population, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once saying: There is no such thing as a Palestinian.

1956 WAR y In the fall of 1948, the UN Security Council called on Israel and the Arab states to negotiate armistice agreements. Egypt agreed, but only after Israel had routed its army and driven to El Arish in the Sinai. By the summer of 1949, armistice agreements had been negotiated between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Iraq, which had also fought against Israel, refused to follow suit. After 1949, the Arabs insisted that Israel accept the borders in the 1947 partition resolution and repatriate the Palestinian refugees before they would negotiate an end to the war they had initiated. Egypt had maintained its state of belligerency with Israel after the armistice agreement was signed. The first manifestation of this was the closing of the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping. On August 9, 1949, the UN Mixed Armistice Commission upheld Israel's complaint that Egypt was illegally blocking the canal. On September 1, 1951, the Security Council ordered Egypt to open the Canal to Israeli shipping. Egypt refused to comply. The escalation continued with the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran, and Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956. The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, combined with the increased fedayeen (Arab terrorists) attacks and the bellicosity of recent Arab statements prompted Israel, with the backing of Britain and France, to attack Egypt on October 29, 1956. The three nations (France, British & Israel) subsequently agreed on a plan whereby Israel would land paratroopers near the canal and send its armor across the Sinai

y y

y y y

y y y

Desert. The British and French would then call for both sides to withdraw from the Canal Zone, fully expecting the Egyptians to refuse. At that point, British and French troops would be deployed to protect the canal. When the decision was made to go to war in 1956, more than 100,000 soldiers were mobilized in less than 72 hours and the air force was fully operational within 43 hours. On October 30, the United States sponsored a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate Israeli withdrawal, but England and France vetoed it. The following day, the two allies launched air operations, bombing Egyptian airfields near Suez. Though their allies had failed to accomplish their goals, the Israelis were satisfied at having reached theirs in an operation that took only 100 hours. By the end of the fighting, Israel held the Gaza Strip and had advanced as far as Sharm al-Sheikh along the Red Sea. A total of 231 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting.

PLO (PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION) y The PLO, lead by Yassir Arafat, was created in 1964 during a meeting known as the Palestinian Congress in an effort to give a voice to the large number of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon. Eventually the group began to splinter into various factions, all of whom believed they knew the best way to achieve Palestinian liberation. Most notable of these groups were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, and al-Fatah. Each of these factions remained more-or-less under the umbrella of the PLO and never strayed too far from the fold. By 1967 the PLO had decided that their primary goal was the destruction of the state of Israel. For the next ten years, this goal was the primary focus of the massive terrorist campaign by which their reputation was formed. This war cost untold hundreds of casualties on both sides with very little to show in return.

y y

1967 WAR y y In 1967, Israel conquered still more land. Following the Six Day War, in which Israeli forces launched a highly successful surprise attack on Egypt, Israel occupied the final 22% of Palestine that had eluded it in 1948 the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since, according to international law it is inadmissible to acquire territory by war, these are occupied territories and do not belong to Israel. It also occupied parts of Egypt (since returned) and Syria (which remain under occupation).

Also during the Six Day War, Israel attacked a US Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing and injuring over 200 American servicemen. President Lyndon Johnson recalled rescue flights, saying that he did not want to "embarrass an ally."

1973 - THE YOM KIPPUR WAR y Throughout 1972, and for much of 1973, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat threatened war unless the United States forced Israel to accept his interpretation of Resolution 242-total Israeli withdrawal from territories taken in 1967. On October 6, 1973 Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar Egypt and Syria opened a coordinated surprise attack against Israel. The equivalent of the total forces of NATO in Europe was mobilized on Israel's borders. On the Golan Heights, approximately 180 Israeli tanks faced an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian tanks. Along the Suez Canal, 436 Israeli defenders were attacked by 80,000 Egyptians. Besides serving as financial underwriters, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait committed men to battle. A Saudi brigade of approximately 3,000 troops was dispatched to Syria, where it participated in fighting along the approaches to Damascus. Thrown onto the defensive during the first two days of fighting, Israel mobilized its reserves and eventually repulsed the invaders and carried the war deep into Syria and Egypt. The Arab states were swiftly resupplied by sea and air from the Soviet Union, which rejected U.S. efforts to work toward an immediate ceasefire. Two weeks later, Egypt was saved from a disastrous defeat by the UN Security Council, which had failed to act while the tide was in the Arabs' favor. The Soviet Union showed no interest in initiating peacemaking efforts while it looked like the Arabs might win. The same was true for UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. On October 22, the Security Council adopted Resolution 338 calling for "all parties to the present fighting to cease all firing and terminate all military activity immediately." The vote came on the day that Israeli forces cut off and isolated the Egyptian Third Army and were in a position to destroy it. Despite the Israel Defense Forces' ultimate success on the battlefield, the war was considered a diplomatic and military failure. A total of 2,688 soldiers were killed and 7,250 were wounded. In 1974 the PLO made a conscious decision to alter its focus from the purely terrorist to one that would include political elements, necessary for any meaningful dialogue. This created more unhappiness amongst some followers who felt that the PLO, while striking blows, was not truly finding its mark. This led to the creation of yet another

y y y y

y y

y y

y y

splinter group called the Rejectionist Front. It was at this time that Yassir Arafat and his group al-Fatah took over the leadership role. Things began to change quickly such as the all-important recognition of the PLO by the United Nations and by the Arab peoples at the Rabat Conference. In 1982, the Israeli army swept into Beirut, Lebanon and forced the PLO to flee from its bastion. In a decision that radical Palestinians resented, Arafat agreed to come to the bargaining table to discuss peace with Israeli leaders. By 1988, Arafat had taken the diplomatic road one step further when he not only announced the right of the state of Israel to exist but renounced PLO terrorism. The perceived commitment to these ideals caused Israel to finally agree to serious talks with the PLO. The result of these discussions was that today the Palestinian people live under partial self-rule and seem on the way to obtaining the homeland they have yearned for years. On September 9, 1993, in letters to Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Norwegian Foreign Minister Holst, PLO Chairman Arafat committed the PLO to cease all violence and terrorism. On September 13, 1993, the Declaration of Principles between the Israelis and Palestinians was signed in Washington, DC.

THE MOSSAD y In 1949 Central Institute for Coordination was set up to improve coordination between the Shabak, AMAN and political department of the Foreign Office of Israel. It was under the control of Foreign Ministry. In 1951, CIC was replaced by Mossad under direct supervision of the Prime Minister. In June 1951 Mossad signed a clandestine agreement with the American CIA. The first high profile operation of Mossad came in 1960 when it managed to kidnap Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, from Argentina. Eichmann was sentenced to death for his role in killing Jews in Europe. During the 60 s Mossad provided critical information about Egyptian air force during the 6 day war. Mossad was responsible for assassinating members of a group, who killed Israeli athletes in 1972 during the Munich Olympics. In 1973 it killed an innocent Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki in Norway. The agency confused him as the leader of a Palestinian group Black September , which was responsible for the Munich massacre. This was later known as the Lillehammer affair . The incident caused a diplomatic row with the Canadian government, as the six Mossad agents involved in the murder had used Canadian passports.

y y

y y y

y y

y y y

In 1975, Mossad arranged a secret meeting between the Israeli and Jordanian heads of state. It also arranged a second meeting in 1977. Mossad agents were sent to Uganda, to free 100 hostages held in a plane from Tel Aviv. The agency assisted in Operation Moses in late 70 s. This operation was used to immigrate Jews from Ethiopia. In 1980 Mossad agents killed Yahya al-Mashad, an Egyptian nuclear physicist. The agency provided vital information to the government about the Iraqi nuclear assets. This information was used in the air attacks on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. In the same year, the agency s attempt to use British passports to infiltrate china created uproar in Britain. The agency provided intelligence during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Mossad organized an attack on PLO headquarters in Tunisia that killed 56 Palestinian citizens. Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped from Rome by the agency in September 1986. He was an Israeli citizen who informed western media about Israel s covert nuclear program. The agency failed to assassinate Saddam Hussein in 1991.

TERRORIST HIJACKING IN UGANDA, 1976 y On 27 June, an Air France plane with 248 passengers was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists and flown to Entebbe, near Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Shortly after landing, all non-Israeli passengers, except one French citizen, were released. Operation Entebbe was a counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by the Special Forces of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976. The IDF acted on intelligence provided by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. In the wake of the hijacking by members of the militant organizations Revolutionary Cells and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with the hijackers' threats to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met, the rescue operation was planned. These plans included preparation for armed resistance from Ugandan military troops. The operation took place at night, as Israeli transport planes carried 100 commandos over 2,500 miles (4,000 km) to Uganda for the rescue operation. The operation, which took a week of planning, lasted 90 minutes and 102 hostages were rescued. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and one was killed. All the hijackers, three hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed. The rescue, named Operation Thunderbolt, is sometimes referred to retroactively as Operation Jonathan in memory of the unit's leader, Yonatan Netanyahu.

y y

y y

PEACE INITIATIVES

The Oslo Accords - often considered a historical breakthrough - were based on the formula of land-for-peace. They officially manifested the mutual recognition between the state of Israel and the PLO as representing the Palestinians. This two phased process comprised a transitional period, in which a complete Israeli withdrawal and the establishment of Palestinian autonomous rule was to be achieved, and a second phase tackled difficult issues at a later stage, eventually leading to a final status agreement. Originally, the entire process was scheduled to end on 4 May 1999, but at that date even most of the agreed-upon interim issues remained unimplemented. On September 9, 1993, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat sent a letter to Prime Minister Rabin, in which he stated unequivocally that, the PLO:
y y y y y y y

Recognizes the right of Israel to exist in peace and security; Accepts UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338; Commits itself to a peaceful resolution of the conflict; Renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence; Assumes responsibility over all PLO elements o ensure their compliance, prevent violations, and discipline violators; Affirms that those articles of the PLO Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist are now inoperative and no longer valid; Undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes to the Covenant.

In reply, Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians in the peace negotiations. On September 13, 1993, a joint Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles (DOP), based on the agreement worked out in Oslo, was signed by the two parties in Washington, outlining the proposed interim self-government arrangements. The arrangements contained in the DOP included immediate Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho, early empowerment for the Palestinians in West Bank, and an agreement on self-government and the election of a Palestinian council. The Interim Agreements

Shortly after the signing of the Declaration of Principles, negotiations commenced between Israeli and PLO delegations on the implementation of the interim agreement, which was accomplished in three stages: 1. The Gaza-Jericho Agreement was signed in Cairo on May 4, 1994, and applies to the Gaza Strip and to a defined area of about 65 square kilometers including Jericho and its environs. The Gaza-Jericho agreement addresses four main issues -- security arrangements, civil affairs, legal matters, and economic relations. 2. On August 29, 1994, the Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities was signed by Israel and the Palestinians. In accordance with the DOP, the Agreement provides for the transfer of powers to the Palestinian Authority within five specified spheres: y y y y y Education & Culture Social Welfare Tourism Health Taxation

On August 27, 1995, a protocol was signed transferring additional spheres to the Palestinian Authority: labor, trade and industry, gas and gasoline, insurance, postal services, statistics, agriculture, and local government. 3. On September 28, 1995, the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was signed in Washington, D.C. This agreement, which marks the conclusion of the first stage in negotiations between Israel and the PLO, incorporates and supersedes the Gaza-Jericho and Early Empowerment agreements. CURRENT SCENARIO
y y y

There are two primary issues at the core of this continuing conflict. First, there is the inevitably destabilizing effect of trying to maintain an ethnically preferential state, particularly when it is largely of foreign origin. The original population of what is now Israel was 96 percent Muslim and Christian, yet, these refugees are prohibited from returning to their homes in the selfdescribed Jewish state (and those within Israel are subjected to systematic discrimination).

y y

y y

Second, Israel's continued military occupation and confiscation of privately owned land in the West Bank, and control over Gaza, are extremely oppressive, with Palestinians having minimal control over their lives. Over 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children are held in Israeli prisons. Few of them have had a legitimate trial; Physical abuse and torture are frequent. Palestinian borders (even internal ones) are controlled by Israeli forces. Periodically men, women, and children are strip searched; people are beaten; women in labor are prevented from reaching hospitals (at times resulting in death); food and medicine are blocked from entering Gaza, producing an escalating humanitarian crisis. Israeli forces invade almost daily, injuring, kidnapping, and sometimes killing inhabitants. According to the Oslo peace accords of 1993, these territories were supposed to finally become a Palestinian state. However, after years of Israel continuing to confiscate land and conditions steadily worsening, the Palestinian population rebelled.

THE MUNICH MASSACRE

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MUNICH OLYMPICS
y y

y y

y y

The Federal Republic of Germany was at a crossroads in the mid-1960s, still under the shadow of World War II but viewing the future with optimism. In the seven years between being chosen as host and staging the event itself, Germany experienced favorable economic conditions and a belief in technocratic optimism, but was equally marked by national and international debate and dispute. Public conflicts arose over political ideology, culture and the legacy of the German past, and foreign policy shifts impacted in intricate ways on East West German relations. Against this background, the symbolic potential of the Games did not escape the organizers of the Munich Olympics, who took just one month in 1965 to secure promises of funding from the city of Munich, the Bavarian State and the Federal Government. Hosting the Games was deemed to be of immense importance. The Games were to serve as a showcase of modern Germany , a chance to replace memories of the Third Reich with images of a thriving and prosperous Federal Republic, an opportunity to present an optimistic Germany to the world through its Happy Games its official motto. The Olympics started out as any other Olympics would with a great opening ceremony and many excited and nervous athletes. One hundred and twenty one nations came to participate and they competed in one hundred and ninety five events.

THE ATTACK
y

y y y

y y y

On September 5, 1972 a terrorist group known as Black September infiltrated the Olympic village in Munich, Germany and took hostage eleven Israeli athletes, in what came to be known as the Munich massacre. At 4:30 a.m. local time on September 5, as the athletes slept, eight tracksuit-clad members of Black September carrying duffel bags loaded with AKM assault rifles and grenades scaled a two-meter chain-link fence with the assistance of unsuspecting athletes who were also sneaking into the Olympic Village. Once inside, they used stolen keys to enter two apartments being used by the Israeli team. 25 minutes later, two of the sportsmen were dead, murdered in cold blood and nine others were taken hostage. The terrorists, subsequently reported to be part of the Palestinian fedayeen (men ready to sacrifice themselves for a sacred cause), demanded the release and safe passage to Egypt of 236 prisoners jailed in Israel. After 24 hours, an attempt to storm the building was aborted when the police realized the terrorists were watching their preparations live on television. Two more attempts failed after the terrorists demanded a plane to fly out of Germany. They were ultimately provided with two helicopters to fly them to the Munich airport. It was only after the arrival at the airport that the West German Police realized there were eight terrorists, not the five originally estimated. Considering the early estimate of five terrorists, the police deployed only five German snipers at Furstenfeldbruck airport to initiate the rescue. These police officers were without radio contact with the command post or other police units. As the terrorists moved a 'safe' distance from the hostages, the police snipers were ordered to open fire. Their initial rounds went off-target and a full gun battle ensued. The Israeli captives were still sitting bound in the helicopters which had transported them to the airfield. The initial firefight between the fedayeen and police lasted approximately an hour and fifteen minutes. In minutes, the shootout left all nine remaining hostages dead along with five terrorists. The three remaining terrorists were captured.

THE MOSSAD S REVENGE

y y

Palestinian guerrilla group, The Black September Organization (BSO), claimed responsibility for the killing of the eleven Israelis in Munich. On October 29 of that year, however, a Frankfurt-bound jet was hijacked. The terrorists demanded the release of the captured Black September members, and the German government swiftly complied.

y y y

Under orders from then-prime minister Golda Meir, the Mossad was tasked with hunting down not only the released Munich terrorists but all those involved in planning the massacre. The mission, dubbed Wrath of God, was designed to instill fear in every terrorist s heart. Over the period of two years, Mossad carried out a series of brilliantly planned, clinically executed assassinations. The first terrorist was shot eleven times in Rome, one bullet for each Israeli he helped murder. Another died when he answered a call in Paris; the bomb in the phone blew off his head. The next to die was expertly pushed under a London bus at rush hour. Hours before they died, each man s family would receive flowers and a condolence card bearing the same words A reminder we do not forget or forgive.

THE VIETNAM WAR

The world during the 20th century: World War II had led to the collapse of colonialism.
y y

In Europe, the Nazis invaded most Western European colonial countries - The Netherlands, Belgium, and France - and threatened the Great Britain shore. In Asia, Japanese quickly conquered the Indochinese Peninsula (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), invaded Malaysia, Burma, The Philippines, Indonesia, and crushed the Western colonial forces as well. At the end of World War II, The United States of America defeated Japan and liberated Korea.

People from these colonies stood up for their independence.

y

The British had foreseen this movement and restored independence to its colonies. One of them was India even though India had no resistance by force but non-violent struggle. In Vietnam, the glorious though unsuccessful 1930 Yen-Bai uprising led by the VNQDD and later the execution of the Party leader Nguyen Thai Hoc along with twelve other

party members by the French colonists, elevated the aspiration for independence of the Vietnamese people to the highest point as well as the undying animosity. Since this uprising, the end of the French colonialist regime in Vietnam came closer.

The world began to enter the Cold War between the two blocs led by the Soviet Union and the USA. Both sides advocated liberation of colonies to win them over.
y

On March 9, 1945; Japanese forces overthrew the French in the Indochinese Peninsula and restored independence to Vietnam. The Japanese government as well as King BaoDai declared the independent status of Vietnam to the world. Premier Tran Trong Kim formed the first Vietnamese government.

HO CHI MINH
y y

y y y

Before Japan surrendered to the USA, Ho Chi Minh worked with OSS (Office of Strategic Services), a US intelligence agency. He built up Viet-Minh forces. After Japan surrendered, Japanese forces were still in control of Indochina. They could have crushed Viet Minh forces easily had Bao Dai and Tran Trong Kim requested them to do so. However, King Bao-Dai agreed to transfer his power to Viet Minh because he thought that Ho Chi Minh was working with the USA, and could guarantee independence for Vietnam. On August 19, 1945, at a spontaneous non-communist meeting in Hanoi, Ho and his men stole the leading role to seize power and on September 2, he delivered his Declaration of Independence. People at that time were happy to join meetings after meetings, to march joyfully with drums beating and martial music. It was natural because after 80 years under the French domination, they were eager to enjoy the nation's independence and expected a happy bright future. Many did not realize that later they would be living under a dictatorial regime lasting for more than half a century until now. Ho Chi Minh after in power signed the March 6, 1946 agreement to allow the French forces coming back to Vietnam. To show his welcome to the arrival of French Special Envoy Sainteny and French military units coming under the March 6 Agreement, Ho Chi Minh instructed people to display flags. Ho showed to the French that people appreciated their coming back. Ho and the French together massacred hundreds of leaders and thousands of rank-andfile members of various nationalist groups. The French gave the Viet Minh military equipment, troops and even artillery support to carry this out.

In July 1946, Ho's forces stormed the headquarters of all the remaining nationalist groups while French armored personnel carriers cordoned off surrounding areas. Most of the few remaining opposition leaders were arrested and later killed. On December 19, 1946, the War of Resistance against the French forces burst out. The French seized control of several cities. Ho Chi Minh and the resistance forces had to withdraw from those key cities and conducted the guerrilla warfare against the French Expeditionary Army. The fact that Ho Chi Minh ruled North Vietnam as well as Bao Dai and Ngo Dinh Diem controlled South Vietnam did not mean that these rulers contributed much to the independence of Vietnam. Among them, Ho Chi Minh was even a betrayal who invited and worked with the enemy to kill his opponents.

U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN SOUTH VIETNAM

y

y y

y y y

In 1961, South Vietnam signed a military and economic aid treaty with the United States leading to the arrival of U.S. support troops and the formation of the U.S. Military Assistance Command. Mounting dissatisfaction with the ineffectiveness and corruption of Diem's government culminated in a military coup engineered by Duong Van Minh; Diem was executed. No one was able to establish control in South Vietnam until June, 1965, when Nguyen Cao Ky became premier, but U.S. military aid to South Vietnam increased, especially after the U.S. Senate passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution (Aug. 7, 1964). In early 1965, the United States began air raids on North Vietnam and on Communistcontrolled areas in the South; by 1966 there were 190,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam. North Vietnam, meanwhile, was receiving armaments and technical assistance from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. Despite massive U.S. military aid, heavy bombing, the growing U.S. troop commitment (which reached nearly 550,000 in 1969), and some political stability in South Vietnam after the election of Nguyen Van Thieu as president, the United States and South Vietnam were unable to defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. Optimistic U.S. military reports were discredited in February 1968, by the costly and devastating Tet offensive of the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, involving attacks on more than 100 towns and cities and a month-long battle for Hue in South Vietnam.

EFFECTS OF THE WAR

y y

The Vietnam War was a very costly war. It was an extremely costly war with over 58,000 Americans dead and over 150,000 wounded in battle. North Vietnam was victorious over South Vietnam and allied forces. The Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 marked the end of a very bloody war. The Vietnam War had many long lasting effects on the veterans who fought for America from the 1950s to the 1970s. These veterans formed an organization known as Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

A chemical used by the United States, Agent Orange, had adverse effects on veterans. Approximately 20 million gallons of herbicides were used in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to remove unwanted plant life and leaves which otherwise provided cover for enemy forces during the Vietnam Conflict. Due to the Vietnam War an issue with narcotics also developed. One form of narcotics causing a large amount of trouble was heroin. The Vietnam War also had dramatic effects on the people living in Vietnam, South Vietnam in particular. With North Vietnam the victor, South Vietnam was forced to submit to the communist rule of the North. Persecution and poverty prompted an additional two million people to flee Vietnam as boat people over the 20 years following unification. In this way not only did the people of Vietnam suffer the most casualties, but if they lived in South Vietnam following the war they suffered for they had favored freedom over oppression. The use of chemical weapons in Vietnam affected the local population a great deal. More than one million people suffered from serious diseases, including different types of cancer and disabilities, as a result of the spreading of defoliants and herbicides, and in particular AGENT ORANGE, which contained large amounts of dioxin.

ANTI WAR PROTESTS IN THE US

y

y y y

y y

The antiwar movement actually consisted of a number of independent interests, often only vaguely allied and contesting each other on many issues, united only in opposition to the Vietnam War. Attracting members from college campuses, middle-class suburbs, labor unions, and government institutions, the movement gained national prominence in 1965, peaked in 1968, and remained powerful throughout the duration of the conflict. Encompassing political, racial, and cultural spheres, the antiwar movement exposed a deep schism within 1960s American society. Perhaps the most significant development of the period between 1965 and 1968 was the emergence of Civil Rights leaders as active proponents of peace in Vietnam. The peaceful phase of the antiwar movement had reached maturity as the entire nation was now aware that the foundations of administration foreign policy were being widely questioned. But widespread opposition within the government did not appear until 1968. Exacerbating the situation was the presidential election of that year, in which Johnson faced a strong challenge from peace candidates Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and George McGovern, all Democrats, as well as his eventual successor, Richard M. Nixon. On 25 March Johnson learned that his closest advisors now opposed the war; six days later, he withdrew from the race. The antiwar movement became both more powerful and, at the same time, less cohesive between 1969 and 1973. Most Americans pragmatically opposed escalating the U.S. role in Vietnam, believing the economic cost too high.

END OF THE WAR

y y

y y

By the time the United States realized that the war was utterly unwinnable, it was already too late. In 1973, when President Nixon withdrew the last U.S. ground troops, nearly 60,000 Americans were dead, thousands more suffered from the physical and psychological repercussions of the brutal warfare in the jungles of Vietnam, and the American people had learned to distrust their leaders and to question their nation's essential values. In 1975, South Vietnamese government forces surrendered to the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese Army. Vietnam was, at last, united and united under a Communist government. The U.S. had officially failed to achieve its original objectives. A nation accustomed to grand victories suffered its first major defeat; the "longest war" was a military, political, and social disaster, one that would haunt Americans for

decades.

POL POT
RISE OF THE KYMER ROUGE

y y

Cambodia became embroiled in the Vietnam War because the North Vietnamese used it as a conduit for men and supplies to South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese sought local allies to fight the war for them, and chose the Khmer Rouge (KR) an obscure guerrilla group numbering about 3,000 men. The Khmer Rouge now found themselves armed with Chinese and Russian weapons, supplied via the Ho Chi Minh trail. The war turned against the Cambodian army. The US stepped up the bombing campaign but this only played into the Khmer Rouge s hands. With American troops now out of Vietnam, Congress ordered a halt to the bombing in August, 1973, leaving the Khmer Rouge in control of most of the country. By April 1975, their forces had taken the capital, becoming the undisputed rulers of Cambodia. During their three-year, eight-month, and 21-day rule of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge committed some of the most heinous crimes in modern history: The entire population of Cambodia's urban areas was evacuated from their homes and forced to march into rural areas to work the fields. Every man, woman, and child was forced into slave labor for 12-15 hours each day. An estimated two million people (21% of Cambodia's population) lost their lives. Many of these victims were brutally executed; many more died of starvation, exhaustion, and disease.

y y

y y

DICTATOR POL POT

y

Pol Pot, who became responsible for the deaths of over two million of his own people, went to study in Paris on a government scholarship in 1949. After four years of exposure to Stalinist Communism he returned to Cambodia in 1953. Within a month he had joined the Communist resistance, becoming a member of the Indochina Communist Party (IHC) which was dominated by the Viet Minh. The 1954 Cambodian elections saw the Communists throw in support with the Democrats. The Democrats were soundly defeated. Pol Pot now took up a post as a teacher in a private college. He also spent his time recruiting the educated classes to the Communist cause. The Government, however, began a Communist crackdown and Pol Pot was forced to flee to the Jungles near the Vietnam border to avoid arrest.

y y

For the next seven years spent his time in the Cambodian jungle hiding from the police. Over the ensuing years the communists bided their time as they built up their strength for a take-over attempt. A final Communist assault began on January 1, 1975. This time they were victorious. On April 17, Communist forces entered Phnom Penh. Within 24 hours they had ordered the entire city evacuated. This process was repeated in other cities resulting in more than 2 million Cambodians being forced out of their homes. Many of them starved to death.

SUPPRESSION & DESTRUCTION y Pol Pot and his henchmen now transformed almost every aspect of Cambodian life, building the kind of classless society they had advocated for years. y Politically, they replaced all existing parties and institutions with one organization the so-called Angkar whose leaders exercised virtually unlimited power. y The economy was also remade. The free market was abolished, and replaced with a system of forced labour and rationing. y Factories and banks were closed down, and money eliminated. All private production, ownership and exchange were abolished. y Socially, the Khmer Rouge completely transformed Cambodia. They began by emptying the cities and towns, forcing people to work as farmers or labourers. They also outlawed religion and traditional family structures, and branded intellectuals and professionals as class enemies. y Anyone with an education or who suffered from memory sickness (a longing for the past) could be put to death. At least 170,000 people were executed in prison camps, while between one and two million died of disease and starvation. y The Khmer Rouge tried to impose the concept of Year Zero and targeted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who had contact with Western countries or with Vietnam, disabled people, and the ethnic Chinese, Laotians and Vietnamese. y Some were put in the S-21 camp for interrogation involving torture in cases where a confession was useful to the government. Many others were executed. y Confessions forced at S-21 were extracted from prisoners through such methods as water boarding, removing toenails with pliers, suffocating a prisoner repeatedly, and skinning a person while alive. POLICY OF COLLECTIVIZATION
y

Pol Pot became the de facto leader of Cambodia in mid-1975.

y y y y

During his time in power, Pol Pot imposed a version of agrarian collectivization, forcing city dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labour projects, toward a goal of restarting civilization in Year Zero . The combined effects of slave labour, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people, approximately 21% of the Cambodian population. In August, 1976 he unveiled his Four Year Plan, which detailed the collectivization of agriculture, the nationalization of industry and the financing of the economy through increased agricultural exports. This plan caused untold misery to the nation with many thousands dying in the paddy fields. Crops needed to feed the population were marked for export. Malnutrition was rampant, made worse by the Communist insistence on traditional Cambodian medicine. Pol Pot also started the infamous S-21 interrogation centre where more than 20,000 men, women and children were tortured to death.

THE SOVIET AFGHAN WAR

y y y y y Afghanistan War, 1978 92: conflict between anti-Communist Muslim Afghan guerrillas (mujahidin) and Afghan government and Soviet forces. The conflict had its origins in the 1978 coup that overthrew Afghan president Sardar Muhammad Daud Khan, who had come to power by ousting the king in 1973. The president was assassinated and a pro-Soviet Communist government under Noor Mohammed Taraki was established. In 1979 another coup, which brought Hafizullah Amin to power, provoked an invasion (Dec., 1979) by Soviet forces and the installation of Babrak Karmal as president. The fear that Amin was adopting an anti-Soviet attitude, revealed in a December 1979 top secret report on events in Afghanistan by Soviet ministers, provoked the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan. Amin was killed three days later. Babrak Karmal returned from the Soviet Union and became the new Prime Minister, President of the Revolutionary Council and Secretary General of the PDPA. Widespread Mujaheedin resistance against Babrak's regime brought Soviet support to the embattled leader and initiated the Soviet-Afghan war. The Soviet invasion, which sparked Afghan resistance, intially involved an estimated 30,000 troops, a force that ultimately grew to 100,000. The mujahidin were supported by aid from the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia, channeled through Pakistan, and from Iran. The US begins supplying mujahideen with

y y y y

Stinger missiles, enabling them to shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships. Karmal is replaced by Mohammed Najibullah. Although the USSR had superior weapons and complete air control, the rebels successfully eluded them. The conflict largely settled into a stalemate, with Soviet and government forces controlling the urban areas, and the Afghan guerrillas operating fairly freely in mountainous rural regions. As the war progressed, the rebels improved their organization and tactics and began using imported and captured weapons, including U.S. antiaircraft missiles, to neutralize the technological advantages of the USSR. 15 February, 1989: The USSR announces the departure of the last Soviet troops. More than one million Afghans and 13 thousand Soviet troops have been killed . Civil war continues as the mujahideen push to overthrow Najibullah, who is eventually toppled in 1992. The civil war continued in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan deep in winter, with intimations of panic among Kabul officials. The Afghan mujahideen were poised to attack provincial towns and cities and eventually Kabul, if necessary. A transitional government, sponsored by various rebel factions, proclaimed an Islamic republic, but jubilation was short-lived. President Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the Islamic Society , a major mujahideen group, refused to leave office in accordance with the power-sharing arrangement reached by the new government. Other mujahideen groups, particularly the Islamic Party , led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, surrounded Kabul and began to barrage the city with artillery and rockets. These attacks continued intermittently over the next several years as the countryside outside Kabul slipped into chaos. Partly as a response, the Taliban (Pashto: Students ), a puritanical Islamic group led by a former mujahideen commander, Mohammad Omar, emerged in the fall of 1994 and systematically seized control of the country, occupying Kabul in 1996. The Taliban augmented by volunteers from various Islamic extremist groups sheltering in Afghanistan, many of whom were Afghan-Arab holdovers from the earlier conflict soon controlled all but a small portion of northern Afghanistan, which was held by a loose coalition of mujahideen forces known as the Northern Alliance. Fighting continued at a stalemate until 2001, when the Taliban refused demands by the U.S. government to extradite Saudi Arabian exile Osama bin Laden, the leader of an Islamic extremist group, al-Qaeda, which had close ties with the Taliban and was accused of having launched terrorist attacks against the United States, including a group of devastating strikes on September 11.

Subsequently, U.S. special operations forces, allied with Northern Alliance fighters, launched a series of military operations in Afghanistan that drove the Taliban from power by early December.

TIANANMEN SQUARE INCIDENT

y Tiananmen Square incident, also called June Fourth incident or 6/4, series of protests and demonstrations in China in the spring of 1989 that culminated on the night of June 3 4 with a government crackdown on the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Although the demonstrations and their subsequent repression occurred in cities throughout the country, the events in Beijing and especially in Tiananmen Square, historically linked to such other protests as the May Fourth Movement (1919) came to symbolize the entire incident.

Background: y By the spring of 1989 there was growing sentiment among university students and others in China for political and economic reform. The country had experienced a decade of remarkable economic growth and liberalization, and many Chinese had been exposed to foreign ideas and standards of living. In addition, although the economic advances in China had brought new prosperity to many citizens, it was accompanied by price inflation and opportunities for corruption by government officials. In the mid-1980s the central government had encouraged some people (notably scientists and intellectuals) to assume a more active political role, but student-led demonstrations calling for more individual rights and freedoms in late 1986 and early 1987 caused hard-liners in the government and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to suppress what they termed bourgeois liberalism. One casualty of this tougher stance was Hu Yaobang, who had been the CCP general secretary since 1980 and who had encouraged democratic reforms; in January 1987 he was forced to resign his post. The catalyst for the chain of events in the spring of 1989 was the death of Hu in midApril; Hu was transformed into a martyr for the cause of political liberalization. On the day of his funeral (April 22), tens of thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square demanding democratic and other reforms. For the next several weeks, students in crowds of varying sizes eventually joined by a wide variety of individuals seeking political, social, and economic reforms gathered in the square.

y y

The initial government response was to issue stern warnings but take no action against the mounting crowds in the square. Similar demonstrations rose up in a number of other Chinese cities, notably Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi an, Changsha, and Chengdu. However, the principal outside media coverage was in Beijing, in part because a large number of Western journalists had gathered there to report on the visit to China by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in mid-May. Shortly after his arrival, a demonstration in Tiananmen Square drew some one million participants and was widely broadcast overseas. During the last two weeks of May, martial law was declared in Beijing, and army troops were stationed around the city. However, an attempt by the troops to reach Tiananmen Square was thwarted when Beijing citizens flooded the streets and blocked their way. Protesters remained in large numbers in Tiananmen Square, centring themselves around a plaster statue called Goddess of Democracy, near the northern end of the square. Western journalists also maintained a presence there, often providing live coverage of the events.

Crackdown and aftermath y By the beginning of June, the government was ready to act again. On the night of June 3 4, tanks and heavily armed troops advanced toward Tiananmen Square, opening fire on or crushing those who again tried to block their way. Once the soldiers reached the square, a number of the few thousand remaining demonstrators there chose to leave rather than face a continuation of the confrontation. By morning the area had been cleared of protesters, though sporadic shootings occurred throughout the day. The military also moved in forcibly against protesters in several other Chinese cities, including Chengdu, but in Shanghai the mayor, Zhu Rongji (later to become the premier of China), was able to negotiate a peaceful settlement. By June 5 the military had secured complete control, though during the day there was a notable, widely reported incident involving a lone protester momentarily facing down a column of tanks as it advanced on him near the square. In the aftermath of the crackdown, the United States instituted economic and diplomatic sanctions for a time, and many other foreign governments criticized China s handling of the protesters. The Western media quickly labeled the events of June 3 4 a massacre. The Chinese government arrested thousands of suspected dissidents; many of them received prison sentences of varying lengths of time, and a number were executed. The disgraced Zhao Ziyang was soon replaced as party general secretary by Jiang Zemin and put under house arrest.

"Tank Man" or the "Unknown Rebel"

The city lapsed into shock during June 4, with just the occasional volley of gunfire breaking the stillness. Parents of missing students pushed their way to the protest area, seeking their sons and daughters, only to be warned off and then shot in the back as they fled from the soldiers. Doctors and ambulance drivers who tried to enter the area to help the wounded were also shot down in cold blood by the PLA. A young man in a white shirt and black pants, with shopping bags in each hand, stepped out into the street and stopped the tanks. The lead tank tried to swerve around him, but he jumped in front of it again. Everyone watched in horrified fascination, afraid that the tank driver would lose patience and drive over the man. At one point, the man even climbed up onto the tank and spoke to the soldiers inside, reportedly asking them, "Why are you here? You have caused nothing but misery." After several minutes of this defiant dance, two more men rushed up to the Tank Man and hustled him away. His fate is unknown.

Chinese Government on the issue: y From the outset of the incident, the Chinese government s official stance was to downplay its significance, labeling the protesters counterrevolutionaries and minimizing the extent of the military s actions on June 3 4. The government s count of those killed was 241 (including soldiers), with some 7,000 wounded; most other estimates have put the death toll much higher. In the years since the incident, the government generally has attempted to suppress references to it. Public commemoration of the incident is officially banned. However, the residents of Hong Kong have held an annual vigil on the anniversary of the crackdown, even after Hong Kong reverted to Chinese administration.

CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER: 26TH APRIL, 1986

About Chernobyl Nuclear Plant y y The Chernobyl station was situated at the settlement of Pripyat, about 65 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine. Built in the late 1970s on the banks of the Pripyat River, Chernobyl had four reactors, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of electric power.

What happened? y In the early hours of April 26th, 1986, an explosion ripped through the Chernobyl power station. The blast was to cause the worst nuclear accident in history, leading to death and health problems for several thousands of people across parts of Europe.

25-26 April 1986 y Engineers on the evening shift at Chernobyl's number four reactor began an experiment to see whether the cooling pump system could still function using power generated from the reactor under low power should the auxiliary electricity supply fail. At 2300 control rods, which regulate the fission process in a nuclear reactor by absorbing neutrons and slowing the chain reaction, were lowered to reduce output to about 20% of normal output required for the test. However, too many rods were lowered and output dropped too quickly, resulting in an almost complete shutdown.

Safety systems disabled y y y Concerned by possible instability, engineers began to raise the rods to increase output. At 0030 the decision was taken to carry on. By 0100 power was still only at about 7%, so more rods were raised. The automatic shutdown system was disabled to allow the reactor to continue working under low power conditions. The engineers continued to raise rods. By 0123, power had reached 12% and the test began. But seconds later, power levels suddenly surged to dangerous levels.

Overheating y y y The reactor began to overheat and its water coolant started to turn to steam. At this point it is thought that all but six control rods had been removed from the reactor core - the minimum safe operating number was considered to be 30. The emergency shutdown button was pressed. Control rods started to enter the core, but their reinsertion from the top displaced coolant and concentrated reactivity in the lower core.

Explosions y y y y With power at roughly 100 times normal, fuel pellets in the core began to explode, rupturing the fuel channels. At about 0124, two explosions occurred, causing the reactor's dome-shaped roof to be blown off and the contents to erupt outwards. As air was sucked in to the shattered reactor, it ignited flammable carbon monoxide gas causing a reactor fire which burned for nine days. Because the reactor was not housed in a reinforced concrete shell, as is standard practice in most countries, the building sustained severe damage and large amounts of radioactive debris escaped into the atmosphere.

Firefighters crawled onto the roof of the reactor building to fight the blaze while helicopters dropped sand and lead in an effort to quell the radiation.

Why did it happen? y y A combination of procedure violation, design faults, breakdown in communications and a lack of adequate safety procedures led to the worst nuclear accident in history. It took place during a safety test to see if the reactor s turbines could produce sufficient energy to keep the coolant pumps running, in the event of a loss of power. But when the emergency shutdown failed, the reactor went out of control, like a giant kettle boiling dry, resulting in a violent explosion that could be seen for miles around.

Consequences y The 1,000-tonne sealing cap was blown off and, at temperatures of over 2,000C, the reactor s fuel rods melted. The reactor s graphite covering ignited and, in the ensuing inferno, the radioactive fission products released during the core meltdown were sucked up into the atmosphere. A cloud of potentially lethal material was blown over Scandinavia and Europe, as far away as Scotland. 31 Chernobyl staff and fire fighters were killed either immediately, or shortly after, the explosion. It is estimated that over 2,500 people in the surrounding area have died since 1986 and thousands more are experiencing health problems due to high levels of radiation produced by the accident. Three and a half million people were evacuated from the Ukraine but over five million still live in contaminated areas. After the initial evacuation, thousands of people were brought back to Chernobyl. They fought bravely to limit the contamination in the months following the blast, many without suitable protective clothing. The reactor was sealed in a huge, concrete sarcophagus but it will take years and millions of pounds to clean up the site properly.

y y

y y

Environment y y The disaster released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Much of the fallout was deposited close to Chernobyl, in parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. More than 350,000 people resettled away from these areas, but about 5.5 million remain.

y y y y

Contamination with caesium and strontium is of particular concern, as it will be present in the soil for many years. After the accident traces of radioactive deposits were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere. But wind direction and uneven rainfall left some areas more contaminated than their immediate neighbours. Scandinavia was badly affected and there are still areas of the UK where farms face post-Chernobyl controls.

Present day y The sarcophagus encasing Chernobyl was built in haste and is crumbling. Despite strengthening work there are fears it could collapse, leading to the release of tonnes of radioactive dust. Work is due to begin on a 600m replacement shelter designed to last 100 years. This New Safe Confinement will be built on site and then slid over the sarcophagus. The shelter will allow the concrete structure to be dismantled and for the radioactive fuel and damaged reactor to be dealt with. The ends of the structure will be closed-off. Despite the lasting contamination of the area, scientists have been surprised by the dramatic revival of its wildlife. Wild horse, boar and wolf populations are thriving, while lynx have returned to the area and birds have nested in the reactor building without any obvious ill-effects.

y y y y

FALL OF SOVIET UNION

y y y In December of 1991, Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 states. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. The United States rejoiced as its formidable enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the Cold War which had hovered over these two superpowers since the end of World War II. Indeed, the breakup of the Soviet Union transformed the entire world political situation, leading to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe.

What led to this event? y The Soviet Union was built on approximately the same territory as the Russian Empire which it succeeded. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the newly-formed government developed a philosophy of socialism with the eventual and gradual transition to Communism.

The state which the Bolsheviks created was intended to overcome national differences, and rather to create one monolithic state based on a centralized economical and political system. This state, which was built on a Communist ideology, was eventually transformed into a totalitarian state, in which the Communist leadership had complete control over the country. However, this project of creating a unified, centralized socialist state proved problematic for several reasons. First, the Soviets underestimated the degree to which the non-Russian ethnic groups in the country (which comprised more than fifty percent of the total population of the Soviet Union) would resist assimilation into a Russianized State. Second, their economic planning failed to meet the needs of the State, which was caught up in a vicious arms race with the United States. This led to gradual economic decline, eventually necessitating the need for reform. Finally, the ideology of Communism, which the Soviet Government worked to instill in the hearts and minds of its population, never took firm root, and eventually lost whatever influence it had originally carried. By the time of the 1985 rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union s last leader, the country was in a situation of severe stagnation, with deep economic and political problems which sorely needed to be addressed and overcome. Recognizing this, Gorbachev introduced a two-tiered policy of reform. On one level, he initiated a policy of glasnost, or freedom of speech. On the other level, he began a program of economic reform known as perestroika, or rebuilding. What Gorbachev did not realize was that by giving people complete freedom of expression, he was unwittingly unleashing emotions and political feelings that had been pent up for decades, and which proved to be extremely powerful when brought out into the open. Moreover, his policy of economic reform did not have the immediate results he had hoped for and had publicly predicted. The Soviet people consequently used their newly allotted freedom of speech to criticize Gorbachev for his failure to improve the economy. The disintegration of the Soviet Union began on the peripheries, in the non-Russian areas. The first region to produce mass, organized dissent was the Baltic region, where, in 1987, the government of Estonia demanded autonomy. This move was later followed by similar moves in Lithuania and Latvia, the other two Baltic republics. The nationalist movements in the Baltics constituted a strong challenge to Gorbachev s policy of glasnost. He did not want to crack down too severely on the participants in these movements, yet at the same time, it became increasingly evident that allowing them to run their course would spell disaster for the Soviet Union, which would completely collapse if all of the periphery republics were to demand independence.

After the initiative from Estonia, similar movements sprang up all over the former Soviet Union. In the Transcaucasus region (in the South of the Soviet Union), a movement developed inside the Armenian-populated autonomous region of NagornoKarabagh, in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population of this region demanded that they be granted the right to secede and join the Republic of Armenia, with whose population they were ethnically linked. Massive demonstrations were held in Armenia in solidarity with the secessionists in Nagorno-Karabagh. The Gorbachev government refused to allow the population of Nagorno-Karabagh to secede, and the situation developed into a violent territorial dispute, eventually degenerating into an all-out war which continues unabated until the present day. Once this started, nationalist movements emerged in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Byelorussia, and the Central Asian republics. The power of the Central Government was considerably weakened by these movements; they could no longer rely on the cooperation of Government figures in the republics. Finally, the situation came to a head in August of 1991. In a last-ditch effort to save the Soviet Union, which was floundering under the impact of the political movements which had emerged since the implementation of Gorbachev s glasnost, a group of hard-line Communists organized a coup d etat. They kidnapped Gorbachev, and then, on August 19 of 1991, they announced on state television that Gorbachev was very ill and would no longer be able to govern. The country went into an uproar. Massive protests were staged in Moscow, Leningrad, and many of the other major cities of the Soviet Union. When the coup organizers tried to bring in the military to quell the protestors, the soldiers themselves rebelled, saying that they could not fire on their fellow countrymen. After three days of massive protest, the coup organizers surrendered, realizing that without the cooperation of the military, they did not have the power to overcome the power of the entire population of the country. After the failed coup attempt, it was only a few months until the Soviet Union completely collapsed. Both the government and the people realized that there was no way to turn back the clock; the massive demonstrations of the August days had demonstrated that the population would accept nothing less than democracy. Gorbachev conceded power, realizing that he could no longer contain the power of the population. On December 25, 1991, he resigned. By January of 1992, by popular demand, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. In its place, a new entity was formed. It was called the Commonwealth of Independent Republics, and was composed of most of the independent countries of the former Soviet Union. While the member countries had complete political independence, they were linked to other Commonwealth countries by economic, and, in some cases, military ties. Now that the Soviet Union, with its centralized political and economic system, has ceased to exist, the fifteen newly formed independent countries which emerged in its

aftermath are faced with an overwhelming task. They must develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes. A number of wars have developed on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union. Additionally, the entire region is suffering a period of severe economic hardship. However, despite the many hardships facing the region, bold steps are being taken toward democratization, reorganization, and rebuilding in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union. Fall of Berlin wall y y Berlin Wall, barrier that surrounded West Berlin and prevented access to it from East Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany during the period from 1961 to 1989. In the years between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans had fled from East to West Germany, including steadily rising numbers of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals. Their loss threatened to destroy the economic viability of the East German state. In response, East Germany built a barrier to close off East Germans access to West Berlin (and hence West Germany). This barrier, the Berlin Wall, was first erected on the night of August 12 13, 1961, as the result of a decree passed on August 12 by the East German Volkskammer ( Peoples Chamber ). The original wall, built of barbed wire and cinder blocks, was subsequently replaced by a series of concrete walls (up to 15 feet [5 metres] high) that were topped with barbed wire and guarded with watchtowers, gun emplacements, and mines. By the 1980s this system of walls, electrified fences, and fortifications extended 28 miles (45 km) through Berlin, dividing the two parts of the city, and extended a further 75 miles (120 km) around West Berlin, separating it from the rest of East Germany. The Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Cold War s division of East from West Germany and of eastern from western Europe. About 5,000 East Germans managed to cross the Berlin Wall (by various means) and reach West Berlin safely, while another 5,000 were captured by East German authorities in the attempt and 191 more were killed during the actual crossing of the wall. East Germany s hard-line communist leadership was forced from power in October 1989 during the wave of democratization that swept through eastern Europe. On November 9 the East German government opened the country s borders with West Germany (including West Berlin), and openings were made in the Berlin Wall through which East Germans could travel freely to the West. The wall henceforth ceased to function as a political barrier between East and West Germany.