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Section 14/12/2007 1 Shanghai Ghetto: The Shanghai ghetto was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkou District of Japaneseoccupied Shanghai, where about 20,000 Jewish refugees[1] lived during World War II, having fled from Nazi Germany, Austria, Poland and Lithuania. The refugees were settled in the poorest and most crowded area of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food and clothing.[1] The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, but the ghetto was not walled and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave. After Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, the wealthy Baghdadi Jews (many of whom were British subjects) were interned, and American charitable funds ceased. As communication with the US was broken, unemployment and inflation intensified and times got harder for the refugees.The JDC liaison Laura Margolis, who came to Shanghai, attempted to stabilize the situation by getting permission from the Japanese authorities to continue her fundraising effort, turning for assistance to the Russian Jews who arrived before 1937 and were exempt from the new restrictions. The US air raids on Shanghai began in 1944. The most devastating raid took place in July 1945 when 31 refugees were killed, 500 wounded, and 700 left homeless by an attack on a Japanese radio transmitter in the Hongkou district. Some Jews of the Shanghai ghetto took part in the resistance movement. They participated in an underground network to obtain and circulate information and were involved in sabotage of Japanese installations and in aiding downed American pilots to escape into Chinese-held territory.
Nikita Khrushchev: was the chief director of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin. He was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. He was removed from power by his party colleagues in 1964 and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev. He spent the last seven years of his life under the close supervision of the KGB. Established the Warsaw Pact in 1955 in response to the formation of NATO. Ordered the 1956 Soviet military intervention in Hungary (see Hungarian Revolution of 1956). Ceded Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1955. Provided support for Egypt against the West during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Promoted the doctrine of "Peaceful coexistence" in the foreign policy, accompanied by the slogan "To catch up and overtake the West" in internal policy. Khrushchev's downfall came as a result of a conspiracy among the Party bosses, irritated by his erratic policies and cantankerous behaviour, which was seen by the Party as an embarrassment on the international stage. The Communist Party accused Khrushchev of making political mistakes, such as mishandling the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the cold war with China [7] and disorganizing the Soviet economy, especially in the agricultural sector. Initiated the deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba, which led to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Approved East Germany's construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, after the West ignored his request that West Berlin be incorporated into a neutral, demilitarized "free city". Triumph of the Will: is a propaganda film by the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including portions of speeches by Adolf Hitler, interspersed with footage of massed party members. Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening credits. The overriding theme of the film is the return of Germany as a great power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation.
Treaty of Versailles: was a peace treaty that officially ended World War I between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany. It was signed exactly 5 years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, one of the events that triggered the start of the war. Although the armistice signed on November 11, 1918 put an end to the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude a peace treaty. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial provisions required Germany and her allies to accept full responsibility for causing the war and, under the terms of articles 231-248, disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. The Treaty was undermined by subsequent events starting as early as 1922 and was widely flouted by the mid thirties. Blitzkrieg: is a popular name for an offensive operational-level military doctrine which involves an initial bombardment followed by the employment of mobile forces attacking with speed and surprise to prevent an enemy from implementing a coherent defense. The founding principles of these types of operations were developed in the 20th century by various nations, and adapted in the years after World War I, largely by the German Wehrmacht, to incorporate modern weapons and vehicles as a method to help avoid the stalemate of trench warfare and linear warfare in future conflicts. The first practical implementations of these concepts coupled with modern technology were instituted by the Wehrmacht in the opening theatres of World War II.The strategy was particularly effective in the invasions of Western Europe and initial operations in the Soviet Union. These operations were dependent on surprise penetrations, general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to German offensive operations.
Marshall Plan: The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European Recovery Program [ERP]) was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for the allied countries of Europe, and repelling communism after World War II. The initiative was named for Secretary of State George Marshall. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in July 1947. During that period some US$ 13 billion in economic and technical assistance were given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. By the time the plan had come to completion, the economy of every participant state, with the exception of Germany, had grown well past pre-war levels. Over the next two decades, many regions of Western Europe would enjoy unprecedented growth and prosperity. The Marshall Plan has also long been seen as one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased tariff trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level. An intended consequence was the systematic adoption of American managerial techniques. Solidarity: It was the first non-communist trade union in a communist country. In the 1980s it constituted a broad anticommunist social movement. The government attempted to destroy the union with the martial law of 1981 and several years of repressions, but in the end it had to start negotiating with the union. The Roundtable Talks between the weakened government and Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December Wasa was elected President of Poland. The Promise: Good insight into the events that were happening in both sides of Germany. Conrad, his sister Barbara is against government in the east and wants to immigrate because she is seen as a threat because of her sermons, Sophie.
Mikhail Gorbachev: He was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as head of state of the USSR, serving from 1985 until its collapse in 1991. His attempts at reform, perestroika and glasnost, as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan, contributed to the end of the Cold War, and also ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, and is currently the leader of the Union of SocialDemocrats[2], a political party founded after the official dissolution of the Social Democratic Party of Russia in 2007. Key to the collapse of Communism is the Soviet Union. Thought that change had to come from top. Failed to realize that it was too late to reform and his half measures further weakened the economy. Hiroshima: During World War II, the Second Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping During spring and summer of 1945, firebombings of Tokyo and other cities of Japan led to widespread destruction. There were numerous air raids in Hiroshima. To protect against potential firebombings in Hiroshima, students were mobilized to demolish houses and create firebreaks On August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 70,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000. [8] Approximately 69% of the city's buildings were completely destroyed, and 6.6 percent severely damaged.
Collectivization: In the Soviet Union, collectivization was introduced by Stalin in the late 1920s as a way to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into collectives called collective farms (kolkhozes) and state farms (sovkhozes). At the same time, it was argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulaks. It was hoped that the goals of collectivization could be achieved voluntarily, but when the new farms failed to attract the number of peasants hoped, the government blamed the oppression of the kulaks and resorted to forceful implementation of the plan.Due to unreasonably high government quotas, farmers often got far less for their labor than they did before collectivization, and some refused to work. In many cases, the immediate effect of collectivization was to reduce grain and output almost halve livestock, thus producing major famines in 1932 and 1933.[1] In one extreme episode, several million peasants, mainly in Ukraine, died in a famine during the drought of 1932-1933 after Stalin forced the peasants into the collectives (this famine is known in Ukraine as Holodomor). It was not until 1940 that agricultural production finally surpassed its pre-collectivization levels.
Manhattan Project: The Manhattan Project was the project to develop the first nuclear weapon (atomic bomb) during World War II by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), it refers specifically to the period of the project from 19411946 under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the administration of General Leslie R. Groves. The scientific research was directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.The project succeeded in developing and detonating three nuclear weapons in 1945: a test detonation of a plutonium implosion bomb on July 16 (the Trinity test) near Alamogordo, New Mexico; an enriched uranium bomb code-named "Little Boy" on August 6 over Hiroshima, Japan; and a second plutonium bomb, code-named "Fat Man" on August 9 over Nagasaki, Japan.The project's roots lay in scientists' fears since the 1930s that Nazi Germany was also investigating nuclear weapons of its own. Born out of a small research program in 1939, the Manhattan Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $2 billion USD ($23 billion in 2007 dollars based on CPI). It resulted in the creation of multiple production and research sites that operated in secret. Containment: Containment refers to the foreign policy strategy of the United States in the early years of the Cold War. Its policy was to stop what it called the domino effect of nations moving politically towards Soviet Union-based communism, rather than EuropeanAmerican-based capitalism.
General Franco: Franco received important support from Hitler and Mussolini during the civil war. He remained emphatically neutral in the Second World War, but nonetheless offered various kinds of support to Italy and Germany. He allowed Spanish soldiers to volunteer to fight in the German Army against Stalin (the Blue Division), but forbade Spaniards to fight in the West against the liberal democracies. Franco's common ground with Hitler was particularly weakened by Hitler's propagation of a pseudo-pagan mysticism and his attempts to manipulate Christianity, which went against Franco's deep commitment to defending Christianity and Catholicism Benito Mussolini: was the prime minister of Italy from 1922 until 1943, when he was overthrown. He established a Fascist regime that valued nationalism, militarism and anti-communism combined with strict censorship and state propaganda. Mussolini became a close ally of German dictator Adolf Hitler, whom he influenced. Mussolini entered World War II in June 1940 on the side of Nazi Germany. Three years later, the Allies invaded Italy and occupied most of southern Italy. In April 1945, Mussolini attempted to escape to Switzerland, only to be captured and killed near Lake Como by Italian communist partisans. His body was brought to Milan where it was hung upside down at a petrol station for public viewing and confirmation of his demise. Appeasement: Appeasement is a policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles. Usually it means giving into demands of an aggressor in order to avoid war. Since World War II, the term has gained a negative connotation in the British government, in politics and in general, of weakness, cowardice and self-deception. A famous example is Neville Chamberlain's foreign policy during the inter-war period 1919-1939 when he used a policy of appeasement in order to prevent (in vain) another general European war.
The Prague Spring: was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia starting January 5, 1968 when Alexander Dubek came to power, and running until August 21 of that year when the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies (except Communist Romania) invaded the country. The Velvet Revolution: refers to a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that saw the overthrow of the Communist government there;[1] it is seen as one of the most important of the Revolutions of 1989.On November 17, 1989 (Friday), a peaceful student demonstration in Prague was suppressed by riot police. That event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from November 19 to late December. By November 20 the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swelled from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. A two hour general strike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was held on November 27.\With the collapse of other Communist governments, and increasing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced on November 28 that it would relinquish power and dismantle the single-party state. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removed from the border with West Germany and Austria in early December. On December 10, President Gustv Husk appointed the first largely non-Communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948, and resigned. Alexander Dubek was elected speaker of the federal parliament on December 28 and Vclav Havel the President of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989.In June 1990 the first democratic elections since 1946 were held in Czechoslovakia, resulting in the country's first completely non-Communist government in over forty years.In recent years, it has been called the Velvet Scam (Sametovy Podvod) by local people. This is due to the increasing belief (and possible evidence) that the whole thing was orchestrated by the communist party ahead of time.
Nuremburg Laws: of 1935 were denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. They used a pseudoscientific basis for racial discrimination against Jews. People with 4 German grandparents (white circles on the chart) were of "German blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right). A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood". The Schlieffen Plan: was the German General Staff's overall strategic plan for victory both on the Western Front against France and against Russia in the east, taking advantage of expected differences in the three countries' speed in preparing for war. It was executed to near victory in the first month of World War I; however, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris, the Battle of the Marne (combined with surprisingly speedy Russian offensives), ended the German offensive and resulted in years of trench warfare. The plan has been the subject of debate among historians and military scholars ever since. The Schlieffen Plan was created by Alfred Graf von Schlieffen.
Weimar Republic: is the nickname given to the German state from 1919 to 1933. It was dubbed the "Weimar Republic" by historians in honor of the city of Weimar, where a national assembly convened to write and adopt a new constitution (which became effective on August 11, 1919) for the German Reich, following the nation's defeat in World War I.Despite its political form, the new republic was still officially known as the Deutsches Reich in German, rendered as "German Empire" or the half-translated term "German Reich" in English. [7] The name Weimar Republic is an invention of historians, and was not used during its existence; the common short form remained "Germany". The Weimar Republic was established in February 1919 in defeated Germany and lasted until March 1933, when the state's interior was replaced with Hitler's socalled "Third Reich" (see Nazi Germany).This first attempt to establish a liberal democracy in Germany happened during a time of civil conflict, and failed with the ascent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Although technically the 1919 constitution was not invalidated until after World War II, the legal measures taken by the Nazi government in 1933 (commonly known as Gleichschaltung) destroyed the mechanisms of a typical democratic system, so that 1933 is usually cited as the end of the Weimar Republic.
Berlin Wall: was a barrier separating West Berlin from East Berlin and the rest of East Germany. The longer 'inner German border' demarked the remainder of the East-West German border between the two states.The wall divided East and West Berlin for 28 years, from the day construction began on August 13, 1961 until it was dismantled in 1989. During this period 125 people were killed trying to cross the Wall into West Berlin, according to official figures However, a prominent victims' group claims that more than 200 people had been killed trying to flee from East to West Berlin. Newly discovered documents confirm that the Communist regime gave explicit orders to shoot and kill attempted defectors. The East German government had always denied having such a policy.[3]When the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that entering West Berlin would be permitted, crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest of it.The fall of the Berlin wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990. Glasnost: is the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev.This word was frequently used by Gorbachev to specify the policies he believed might help reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, and moderate the abuse of administrative power in the Central Committee.Glasnost also means the specific period in the history of the USSR, and then Russia, during 1990-2000 when freedom of information was not suppressed, and there was no censorship of the mass media.
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