World War 2 conferences

Yalta Conference:

• Took place during WW2 (February 1945) in Yalta, Crimea

• Attendees

  • Franklin D Roosevelt (US)

  • Winston Churchill (Britain)

  • Joseph Stalin (USSR)

• Reasons for meeting

  • Major reason: try to get USSR to join Allies to defeat Japan

    • Allies weren’t confident that they would defeat Japan

  • Allies were confident they would defeat Germany

    • Wanted to start figuring out what to do with Germany

• Results

  • Major result: USSR would join in the war against Japan in exchange for land (sphere of influence in Manchuria)

    • Didn’t actually join until 4 months after Yalta conference when US was about to drop the atomic bombs against Japan so some say they didn’t really do that much

  • Germany was to pay reparations to compensate for USSR’s losses

  • USSR would allow free elections in areas liberated from Nazi control if new eastern European nations formed (formed from land lost from Germany after they lost the war) that bordered USSR should be “friendly” to Soviets

Winston Churchill:

• British prime minister

• Attended Yalta conference and part of Potsdam conference

  • He was replaced by Clement Attlee in late July

• Thought that France should be included in post-war planning of Germany

• Thought Germany should pay some (not all) reparations for war expenses

• Wanted to get USSR to join Allies to defeat Japan

• Skeptical of Stalin and thought that he wouldn’t hold up on his promise (at Yalta conference) of allowing free elections to newly formed eastern European countries

Franklin D Roosevelt:

• US president

• Attended Yalta conference

  • Not Potsdam because his presidency term was over by then

• Thought that France should be included in post-war planning of Germany

• Thought Germany should pay some (not all) reparations for war expenses

• Wanted to get USSR to join Allies to defeat Japan

• Trusted Stalin when he said he would allow free elections

  • Some criticize his actions at Yalta because they say he “handed over” eastern Europe to Stalin

Joseph Stalin:

• Communist leader of USSR

• Attended Yalta and Potsdam conferences

• Churchill and Roosevelt wanted him to join war to help defeat Japan

• Got a sphere of influence in Manchuria in exchange for helping Allies defeat Japan

• Was supposed to allow new states bordering USSR to have free elections (Yalta conference) but went back on his word and said he wouldn’t allow free elections (Potsdam conference)

• Mainly wanted to take over Poland with communism because the mainland USSR was on the east of Poland and the soviet part of Germany (decided at Potsdam) was on the west of Poland, so conquering Poland would connect their German territory to the main part of their country

Potsdam Conference:

• Took place after Germany surrendered from WW2 (July-August 1945) in Potsdam, Germany

• Attendees

  • Harry S Truman (US)

  • Winston Churchill (Britain)

    • Only until late July because he was replaced by Clement Attlee

  • Joseph Stalin (USSR)

• Reasons for meeting

  • Major reason: how to handle Germany

    • USSR wanted Germany to pay harsh reparations (which would mostly go to them) but Truman thought it was better to have them pay less reparations (learn from mistakes of Treaty of Versailles)

• Results

  • Land division of Germany into 4 zones (one for each of the 4 major Allies)

  • Disarmament and demilitarization of Germany

  • Poland received some land from eastern Germany

  • Potsdam Declaration

    • Japan would be threatened with “prompt of utter destruction” if it didn’t surrender immediately

Harry S Truman:

• US president

• Attended Potsdam conference

• Wanted Germany to pay less harsh reparations

  • Learn from mistakes of Treaty of Versailles

• Told Stalin that US had successfully built and tested the atomic bomb

  • Some say this was a mistake because it allowed Stalin to know his help wasn’t really needed against Japan

Reading and cartoons

“Salami tactics”:

• USSR (Stalin) trying to spread communism around the world, one country at a time

• Like salami because Stalin was cutting off each country like a piece of salami and eating it (converting it to communism)

“Iron curtain”:

• Divide between Europe

  • Not a physical wall, just something Churchill said as a reference to how Europe was deeply divided between east (communism) and west (democracy)

• Different from Berlin Wall because Berlin Wall was physical and only divided one city (iron curtain divided entirety of Europe)

Policy of containment:

• Trying to contain/stop the spread of communism

• Used by US

• Is not trying to “undo” communism/erase it completely because they knew that would be impossible

• Was mainly trying to keep communism from reaching more places than it was already in

• Was the reason US got into Korean War, Vietnam War, and Cuban missile crisis

• They believed that money and resources was the best way to prevent the spread of communism into a country, so they would send money and other resources to countries fighting communism

Truman Doctrine:

• US providing aid specifically to Turkey and Greece

• Turkey and Greece because of their geographic location

  • The rest of eastern Europe was communist and they wanted to prevent it from spreading (containment) and taking over all of eastern Europe

• Was successful because they never turned communist

Marshall Plan:

• US sending aid to western Europe to keep those countries democratic and help make sure communism doesn’t reach there (containment)

• Money was also sent there to help countries recover from WW2 so they can get back on their feet

Berlin Airlift:

• Stalin was upset by the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine (because he wanted to spread communism and they were trying to limit its spread) so he stopped the Allies from helping west Berlin

• In response, the Allies dropped supplies to their half of Berlin via plane

NATO:

Warsaw Pact:

• Essentially Russia’s NATO

• Created as a result of NATO’s formation

Arms race:

• US and Russia both trying to build more and more bombs

  • Ex: atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, etc.

• Both also built up their militaries

Brinkmanship:

• Always being ready for war

Communism in China

Sun Yat-sen:

• First provisional leader of Republic of China

• First leader of Guomindang

Yuan Shikai:

• Originally a general during Qing Dynasty

• Worked with Yat-sen'

• Took title of president and later emperor

  • Him being emperor made the people mad because they wanted to be done with emperors

• Was forced to abdicate and eventually died

Chiang Kai-shek/Jiang Jieshi:

• Took over Guomintag (nationalist) movement after Sun Yat-sen died

• Was against communists

• Got money from US to help fight Japanese but money was mostly given to corrupt leaders

  • Fought few battles against Japanese because they were saving strength for fighting Mao and the communists

Guomindang (nationalists):

• Originally led by Sun Yat-sen, later led by Chiang Kai-shek

• Under Yat-sen, they worked with the USSR

• Under Kai-shek, they were against communism

• Got money from US to help fight Japanese but money was mostly given to corrupt leaders

  • Fought few battles against Japanese because they were saving strength for fighting Mao and the communists

• Outnumbered the communist army 3:1

• Corrupt leaders

Chinese civil war:

• Guomintang (nationalists) vs communists

• At first, Guomintag were winning because communists were cornered

• Long march to NW China helped the communists escape

• Communists gained lots of support in NW China by promising land to peasants and promising to increase food production

• Communists were powerful in both, nationalists were kind of powerful in south

• Communists overall had more support because nationalists didn’t try to gain support from peasants

• Communists forced nationalists to flee to Taiwan, which is the start of communist rule in China

Long March:

• Communists marching from SW China to NW China in difficult terrain

• Saved them from losing the Chinese civil war/helped them escape the nationalists

• Mao Zedong started gaining support during this

Mao Zedong:

• First communist leader of China

• Promised land to peasants

• Wanted to reshape China with Marxist socialism

• Wanted to give land to peasants because the richest few owned most of the land and he wanted to fix that

• Made private companies property of the state

Taiwan:

• Nationalists fled to Taiwan after their defeat in Chinese civil war

• Ended up being a different nation from mainland (People’s Republic of China) that was called Nationalist Republic of China

Agrarian Reform Law:

• Mao seized land from landowners

• Killed any that resisted

• Divided the land from the peasants

Collective farms:

• 200-300 households working together on the same farm

Five-Year Plan:

• Set high industrial production goals

Great Leap Forward:

• Was a huge failure

• Mao was trying to take the five year plan even higher

• Super high and unrealistic production goals that had to be met otherwise the people wouldn’t get food

  • Many people starved to death but Mao didn’t care

• Called for even more collective farms and they were larger (communes)

• Mao blamed birds for the lack of success because they ate a little bit of grain instead of his unrealistic expectations

  • Many birds were killed

• After its failure, Mao stepped out of the spotlight and kind of disappeared for a little

Cultural Revolution:

• Mao decided that he needed to revive the communist revolution and had to come back into the limelight

• Appealed to the youth/students by telling them that they were the future of China and that they had to destroy the authority of authority figures

  • Red Guards

  • Many teachers were killed

• The “four olds” were eliminated from society

  • Old habits, customs, ideas, and habits

• The goal was to build the China that Mao was envisioning based on complete trust in communism, Mao, and the state

Red Guards:

• Students that Mao appealed to

• Carried out most of the terror during the Cultural Revolution

• They killed teachers and sometimes family members

• Could turn on anyone they considered a threat to Mao’s dream of China

• Looked up to Mao as their role model/leader

Little Red Book:

• Book of Mao’s sayings and beliefs

• Like Mao’s version of Marx’s Communist Manifesto or Hitler’s Mein Kampf

• The people basically worshipped it