Cold War

The Rosenberg trials refers to the trial, conviction, and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage.

Mercedes Simon was a young German girl who lived in outskirts of Berlin during the days of Berlin Blockade and the monumental Berlin Airlift in its wake. Gail Halverson was a USAF pilot who flew during Berlin airlift and became famous for dropping candies for German children with parachutes. Mercedes wrote him a letter and explained him her address and requested for candy to be dropped in her backyard. He however, sent her candy through mail. 22 years later when Gail was stationed in Germany on an official assignment, Is invited by a young couple for dinner. It turned out that Mercedes was the his host and disclosed her identity and thanked him. Their story is described in famous book Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot by Theis Raven.

The Atomic Age created the cold war. With nuclear weapons, total wars (such as WW2) could no longer be fought. Only limited wars such as the Korean War and Vietnam Wars could be fought. Limited to only CONVENTIONAL weapons (Non-nuclear).

George Kennan's "Long Telegram" essentially depicted the USSR driven by expansionist Communist ideology. It gave the soviets the name that they would constantly probe for weaker nations.

Satellite nations were like ALLIES to the communist Superpowers.

MY TEACHER TOLD ME THAT DURING WW1 RUSSIA WAS STARVING THEY WERE LOSING MONEY ALSO WENT INTO A BIG DEPRESSION WICH MADE THEM DROP OUT THE WAR

In the US leisure activities were not effected. Life went on as usual. The only difference were topics of conversation (humor) during picnics or work, or recreation..."anyone see any mushroom clouds yet...?" "No...good, let's go fishing!" If a massive sounding sonic boom hit...folks would sometimes wonder (or look out their windows) to see if their was a mushroom cloud. The loud sounding boom could've been an atomic weapon going off...meaning someone pushed that darn button (the war's on!).

They had the same as the rest of free Europe, as they were part of it.

Calvin Coolidge

The main topic of discussion at the Potsdam Conference was how to punish Nazi Germany. They also discussed how to restore order to the post-war world, how to handle the effects the war had on their respective regions, and how to maintain continued peace.

The first step would have been to avoid war with Japan during the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. This war cost the Russians two Battleship Fleets (Pacific Fleet and Baltic Fleet) and caused the Battleship Potemkin to mutiny in 1905 (Russian Battleship Potemkin was from the only remaining Russian Fleet stationed in the Black Sea); Japanese intelligence staff also financed some of the Bolshevik covert operations which were undermining the Tsar (whom Japan was at war with); including the financing of Lenin himself. Had the Russo-Japanese War not occurred. Russia would have at least survived past WW1. As history records, Tsarist Russia fell in 1917, one year before the end of WW1, which was 1918.

Soviet Union indeed shot down a US U-2 surveillance plane on 1st May, 1960. The plane was flying from a base in Northern Pakistan and was on a mission over Soviet Union near Ural region when it was shot down by a SAM (SA-2). The pilot Gary Powers was taken prisoner after he safely bailed out.

figure it out yuorself

We had to use ration cards when I was in Europe 1970-1975. The cards limited the amount of purchase of alcohol, tobacco, sugar, and orange juice.I don't remember about the Orange juice but we could only buy four cartons of cigarettes and four quarts of alcohol and five pounds of sugar per month. Our command issued the cards yearly.

US, Britain, USSR, Red China.

The romance of the "Trojan Horse." As years roll by, historians it seems, question the actual existence of the Trojan War, as they do the city of Troy itself.

a wealthy polital Nicaraguan family that helped Nicaragua become a rich nation until they were overthrown by a communist group the FSLN that were backed up by Jimmy Carter and his administration and the Nicaragua became the second poorest country in the western hemisphere.

Europeans heavily colonized many of the different countries in Africa. During the time of the cold war, there was a string of independence movements from many of the different countries in Africa with Libya being the first in 1952.

Francis Gary Powers was the pilot of the U-2 (USA spy plane) shot down while flying over the Soviet Union airspace on May 1, 1960. The event sparked one of the greatest international crises of the Cold War.

The main economic cause of the cold war was America's desire and need for world wide open markets. It was believed that for capitalism to be successful, and the American and world wide economy to recover, open markets were necessary. This was contradictory to the communist belief in closed markets. This issue came to a head in Europe where America wanted open markets in all of Europe and Russia wanted closed markets in countries they wanted to control as a buffer to American capitalism.

In the US, bomb shelters were a boom in business in the late 1950's and early 1960's; the Eisenhower/Kennedy years. They were hardly spoken of after the mid 1960's. By the late 1960's people often spoke fun of those people (made fun of them) that built those bomb shelters. ALthough no doubt some may still exist, bomb shelters in the US are a thing of the past which ended in the 1960's.

It weakened the Chinese, providing an opportunity for Japan to invade.

The Berlin Blockade was supposed to cause the allies to give up western Berlin to the Soviet forces, but instead the allies constantly airlifted supplies past the blockade until it was lifted.

R. Barnet

Named after the Soviet design bureau of Mikoyan-Gurevich (abbreviated MiG). The YAK's were named after Yakovlev, and the LA's after Lavochkin.