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| Lenin Communism in Soviet Union |
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| (1917-1924) Natinalism: Bolshevik dictatorship: State industrialized enough for man and women to have free time to develop human facilities. Lenin declared that women deserved rights equal education, equal wage, legal divorce, dining halls, and child care centers. However NEP reversed this. New Economic Policy: peasants were allowed to sell their produce for profit. This slightly haleped industrialize because peasants made micro- profits which went to banks, banks invested, and state controlled investments and build factories. |
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| Stalin Communism in Soviet Union |
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| (1928-1953) Nationalist, used collectivism to replace private village farms with large cooperative farms. Focused on labor to industrialize, forced labor and prison camps, reached goal. This new industrial society would outlast the total war and turn into a superpower after ww2. The Great Purge eliminated thousands of people that opposed stalin, party members, factory dictators, or managers (families of these included) Though abortion was outlawed and divorce was made difficult women were allowed to pursue higher education and receive professional jobs. Nationalism helped Russia defeat Germany in WW2 non military citizens so dedicated they poured in and sacrificed lives for nation against Germans. |
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| (1922-1943) Benito Mussolini used nationalism to rise to power. He created the sense of nationalism through resentment of other countries and empowerment of Italy. People distraction with nationalism allowed this leader to basically get away with murder of his competition and to be manipulated by him. He used corporatism which was the illusion of individual power was in actuality their loss of workers rights. This fascist nationalism stripped people of their rights and reinforced traditional beliefs. (ex: women, Mussolini “women must obey, do not count in our state” birth control illegal in 1920) everything is done for the good of the nation |
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| (1932-1945) nationalistic , statist, anti-democratic Hitler used resentment anti-Semitism anti-communism and anti capitalism to connect nation. Negative: sterilization of enemies of the state. Work camps and Death camps, nation ignored thinking for the state over individual. Nation followed Hitler to war, cause of World War 2. Women were meant to stay home and uninvolved a positive of this nationalism is development of economy through hitler pouring money into public works and creating 100s of jobs, however wages fell and workers lost many rights |
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War Guilt Clause - Germany should accept the blame for starting World War One
Reparations - Germany had to pay £6,600 million for the damage caused by the war
Disarmament - Germany was only allowed to have a small army and six naval ships. No tanks, no airforce and no submarines were allowed. The Rhineland area was to be de-militarised.
Territorial Clauses - Land was taken away from Germany and given to other countries. Anschluss (union with Austria) was forbidden, Lost many citizens that identified themselves as German |
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| Why Did German resent Treaty of Versailles |
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| The German people were very unhappy about the treaty and thought that it was too harsh. Felt that they didn’t “lose” the war but that it was an unfair fight Germany could not afford to pay the money and during the 1920s the people in Germany were very poor. There were not many jobs and the price of food and basic goods was high. People were dissatisfied with the government and voted to power a man who promised to rip up the Treaty of Versailles. His name was Adolf Hitler. |
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| Other Factors that influenced WW2 |
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Definition
-The League of Nations proved too weak to serve as basis of new international order . It lacked military power, was boycotted by US, and excluded key states of Russia and Germany.
-Italy entered WW1 late and were largely left out of treaty, this caused resentment against those that benefitted from the treaty and fueled Mussolini and Fascism.
• Once Hitler came into power, his goal was to return Germany to a great empire. His ambition led to a complete and sudden outbreak of war in September of 1939. In 1933, Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and two years later announced the creation of a German air force and the return of mass conscription – in deliberate violation of the Treaty of Versailles. |
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| Why Do people embrace empire? |
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• An imperial political structure is established and maintained in two ways: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force (direct, physical action to compel the emperor’s goals), and (ii) as a coercive,hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power (the perception that the emperor can physically enforce his desired goals).
• Late 1800s: do to industrial rev resources were needed, gained by empire, building colonies in different regions
• -Civilization claim: “white man’s burden” To spread technology, knowledge, religion, and culture to uncivilized lands.
• -Imperial expansion good for econ,
• -Economist J.A. Hobson believed oversea empires only benefit wealthy capitalist while distracting public from need of political and economic reform at home.
• -Masses believed they were benefiting.. in actuality were not.
• -Nationalism fueled support of imperial expansion, masses believed the more imperial control of resources the wealthier and more powerful would be the nation as a whole. |
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| came from the emergence of nationalism which allowed groups to come together and overthrow their mother countries. Great Depression hit colonies as much as it hit the mother countries, WW2 left the colonies vulnerable b/c the mother countries were unable to protect them which discredited their original civilization claim. |
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| (1950-1953): After ww2 Korea divided like Germany, A soviet regime took control of North Korea while anti-communist South Korea was propped up by US. The North invaded south, US troops help South while USSR supplied north weaponry and China supplied soldiers Truman’s promised in Truman Doctrine of 1947 to containment fight communism wherever is may go. This war caused the Cold war to go global.b/c it convinced Truman that communism was in movement. It also solidified Cold War in Europe Truman’s adminstrationdamanded that the allies strengthen their military forces and allow rearmament of West Germany. |
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| (1947-1955): Indochina France’s colony, fought for independence Ams Ally to French. Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh adopted the US declaration of Independence when he originally proclaimed independence, he repeatedly asked US for help but they didn’t. In 1954 Vietnam defeated French . Ho Chi Minh then relied on China and Soviet Union for support so the Am Military set up an anti-communist gov’t in South Vietnam. Ams became very involved in war. This war only complicated matters and ended with mass amounts of death and a waste of money to both Soviet and US |
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| (1950s): Nasser overthrows British rule in Egypt US offered to build dam for them on Nile River. Nasser arranged weapons deal with Czechoslovakia, outraged ams denied funds, Nasser joined USSR by nationalizing the Suez Canal. This angered Brits and French who conspired with Israelis’ to invade Egypt, USSR threatened to nuclear strike against the Eisenhower blocked IMF loan application British had to order a ceasefire. |
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| capitalist, no theory or text, Primarily psychological, comes out of states situation, against race, all about resentment, theatrical leader, nationalist, individual serves state, |
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| anti capitalism, Lots of Theory and Research, against upper class, not about resentment |
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Very educated, changed marxism to fit agricultural against the elite, Believed that someone should make revolution for peasants, the Vanguard. He adopted ideology from Marxism. Authoritarianism is key, Marxism-Leninism supports widespread universal social welfare. Improvements in public health and education, provision of child care, provision of state-directed social services, and provision of social benefits are deemed by Marxist-Leninists to help to raise labor productivity and advance a society in development towards a communist society. This is part of Marxist-Leninists' advocacy of promoting and reinforcing the operation of a planned socialist economy. It advocates universal education with a focus on developing the proletariat with knowledge, class consciousness, and understanding and support for communism.
Marxist-Leninist policy on family law has typically involved: the elimination of the political power of the bourgeoisie, the abolition of private property, and an education that taught citizens to abide by a disciplined and a regulated lifestyle dictated by the norms of communism as a means to establish a new social order.
Marxism–Leninism supports the emancipation of women and ending the exploitation of women. The advent of a classless society, the abolition of private property, society collectively assuming many of the roles traditionally assigned to mothers and wives, and women becoming integrated into industrial work has been promoted as the means to achieve women's emancipation. Marxism–Leninism supports the creation of a single-party state led by a Marxist-Leninist communist party as a means to develop socialism and then communism. The political structure of the Marxist-Leninist state involves the rule of a communist vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents the will and rule of the proletariat. Through the policy of democratic centralism, the communist party is the supreme political institution of the Marxist-Leninist state. Elections are held in Marxist-Leninist states for all positions within the legislative structure, municipal councils, national legislatures and presidencies. In most Marxist-Leninist states this has taken the form of directly electing representatiives to fill positions, though in some states; such as China, Cuba, and the former Yugoslavia; this system also included indirect elections such as deputies being elected by deputies as the next lower level of government. These elections are not competitive multiparty elections and most are not multi-candidate elections; usually a single communist party candidate is chosen to run for office in which voters vote either to accept or reject the candidate. |
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| Definition of Mussolini Fascism |
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(1922-1943)
Very Charismatic, An important factor in fascism gaining support in its earliest stages was the fact that it claimed to oppose discrimination based on social class and was strongly opposed to all forms of class war.[49][50] Fascism instead supported nationalist sentiments such as a strong unity, regardless of class, in the hopes of raising Italy up to the levels of its great Roman past. The ideological basis for fascism came from a number of sources. Mussolini utilized works of Plato, Georges Sorel, Nietzsche, and the socialist and economic ideas of Vilfredo Pareto, to create fascism. Mussolini admired The Republic, which he often read for inspiration.[51] The Republic held a number of ideas that fascism promoted such as rule by an elite promoting the state as the ultimate end, opposition to democracy, protecting the class system and promoting class collaboration, rejection of egalitarianism, promoting the militarization of a nation by creating a class of warriors, demanding that citizens perform civic duties in the interest of the state, and utilizing state intervention in education to promote the creation of warriors and future rulers of the state.[52] The Republic differed from fascism in that it did not promote aggressive war but only defensive war, unlike fascism it promoted very communist-like views on property, |
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| Redraw of Euro territorial lines |
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• The peace settlement sought to redraw eastern Europe on national lines. Europe disappeared, and was replaced with independent nation-states. The Allies territory’s all prospered while the countries that supported the defeated side lost territory. Because new territories were drawn out, many Europeans were upset because a lot of eastern Europeans were put into different countries because their territory’s were moved.
o Less than 70% of Hungarians lived in Hungary – more than 3 million were scattered in other states. Over nine million Germans resided outside the borders of Germany.
o The new state of Yugoslavia contained an uneasy mixture of several ethnic groups, most resentful of the dominant Serbs. |
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| In what ways was WW2 the cause of the Cold War? |
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• Hitler took out an insurance policy against fighting a two-front war by persuading Stalin to sign the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The Pact publicly pledged the two powers not to attack each other. It also, secretly divided Poland between them and promised Stalin substantial territorial gains in eastern Poland and the Baltic regions. (p. 859)
• Hitler eventually invaded the Soviet Union which led to his fall because he could never capture it. In March 1941, the US Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which guaranteed that the US would supply Britain with necessary military supplies, with payment postponed until after the war ended. The passage of the Lend-Lease Act was one of the most important decisions in all of World War 2. It gave first Britain and then the Soviets access to American industrial might. The Soviet Union joined Great Britain and the US as an ally. Then it was the three of them against Germany.
• While the Lend-Lease Act supplied the Soviet Union with the basics needed to keep it’s army moving – aircraft, tanks, rails, locomotives, trucks, gasoline, and 15 million pairs of boots – the Soviets did not rely on imports alone. In 1943, Russia manufactured four times as many tanks as it imported, and Soviet production of tanks and antitank guns doubled Germany’s. (p. 864-891)
• A common wartime enemy rather than shared postwar aims wove together the alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. To ensure Soviet security and power, Stalin demanded that Soviet boundaries be extended westward and that the Soviet “sphere of influence” include the states along the Soviet Union’s western borders. Stalin’s demands for friendly and therefore communist-dominated governments in eastern Europe conflicted with American and British aims. F.D.R. saw the establishment of democracies throughout Europe including the Soviet borders, as essential to international security and American prosperity.
• Poland was very much on the agenda in November 1943 when the BIG THREE – Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt – met together for the first time in the Tehran Conference. Stalin insisted on the restoration of the 1940 Polish-Soviet border – the boundary line drawn by the secret clauses of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. At Tehran, then, they agreed – secretly – that Poland’s postwar borders would shift hundreds of miles westward.
• In 1945, the Yalta Conference produced a contradictory compromise. Stalin promised free and democratic elections in eastern Europe while Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that such freely elected democratic governments should be pro-Soviet. They made no decisions to oversee or regulate the elections.
• Stalin hoped to wring every available resource out of Germany to pay for Soviet reconstruction. Roosevelt, however, became convinced that the economic revival of Europe depended on a prosperous Germany. At the Yalta conference, the three decided to divide Germany and the symbolically and strategically vital city f Berlin into occupation zones controlled by the US, the Soviet Union, France, and Britain. (p. 892-897) |
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French for "Beautiful Era") was a period in French social history that is conventionally dated as starting in 1890 and ending when World War I began in 1914. Occurring during the era of the Third French Republic, it was a period characterised by optimism, peace at home and in Europe, new technology and scientific discoveries. The peace and prosperity in Paris allowed the arts to flourish, and many masterpieces of literature, music, theatre, and visual art gained recognition. The Belle Époque was named, in retrospect, when it began to be considered a "golden age" in contrast to the horrors of World War I.
• In the newly rich United States, emerging from the Panic of 1873, the comparable epoch was dubbed the Gilded Age.[1] In the United Kingdom, the Belle Époque overlapped with the late Victorian era and the Edwardian era.
• The Belle Époque featured a class structure that ensured cheap labour. The Paris Metro underground railway system joined the omnibus and streetcar in transporting the working population, including those servants who did not live in the wealthy centres of cities. One result of this was that working-class and upper-class neighbourhoods might be separated by large distances.
• The years between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I were characterized by unusual political stability in western and central Europe. Although tensions between the French and German governments persisted as a result of the French loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, diplomatic conferences, including the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884, and the Algeciras Conference in 1906, mediated disputes that threatened the general European peace. Indeed, for many Europeans in the Belle Époque period, transnational, class-based affiliations were as important as national identities, particularly among aristocrats. An upper-class gentleman could travel through much of Western Europe without a passport and even reside abroad with minimal bureaucratic regulation.[5] World War I, mass transportation, the spread of literacy, and various citizenship concerns changed this.
From Class Notes:
civilizing mission- "white mans burden" - Imperialism, Imperial competition- Arm Race machinary, guns, tanks..etc.
Evolutionary science Darwinism, mendel- genetic heredity, Spencer- social darwinsm, Einstein theory of of relativity
Philosophy Niche- celebration of individual |
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(French pronunciation: is French for "end of the century".[1] The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning.[2] The "spirit" of fin de siecle often refers to the boredom, cynicism, pessimism and the widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence, that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s.[3]
• “Fin de siècle” is most commonly associated with French artists, especially the French symbolists, and was affected by the cultural awareness characteristic of France at the end of the 19th century. However, the expression is also used to refer to a European-wide cultural movement.[4] The ideas and concerns of the fin de siècle influenced the decades to follow and played an important role in the birth of modernism.[5]
• The themes of “fin de siècle” political culture were very controversial and have been cited as a major influence on fascism.[6][7] The major political theme of the era was that of revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society and liberal democracy.[8] The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism,irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism.[9] The fin-de-siècle mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution.[8]
• The expression fin de siècle usually refers to the end of the 19th century, in Europe, France and/or Paris. It hasconnotations of decadence, which are seen as typical for the last years of a culturally vibrant period (La Belle Époque at the turn of the 18th to 19th century and until World War I), and of anticipative excitement about, or despair facing, impending change, or both, that is generally expected when a century or time period draws to a close. In Russia, the term Silver Age is somewhat more popular.
• P.758 – Fear of degeneration also expressed itself in late-nineteenth century efforts to strengthen the boundaries that separated “maleness” from “femaleness”. The feminist and homosexual joined the criminal, the drug addict, and the prostitute in the list of dangerous and degenerate beings. In the decades after 1870, as middle-class women began to move into the public spheres of university education and paid employment, feminism emerged as a political force. Many Europeans and Americans viewed these developments with alarm. They argued that the female body and brain could not withstand the strains of public life. In the antifeminist view, a woman who pursued higher education or a career not only risked her own physical and mental breakdown, she also tended to produce physically and morally degenerate children and so threatened the evolutionary advance of Western societies.
• P. 759 – Heightened concern about gender boundaries pervaded not only the science, but also the art of the late nineteenth-century West. In the visual arts, women often appeared as elemental forces, creatures of nature rather than civilization, who threatened to trap, emasculate, engulf, suffocate, or destroy the unwary man.
• 19th-century feminists reacted not only to the injustices they saw but also against the increasingly suffocating Victorian image of the "proper" role of women and their "sphere".[40] This was the "feminine ideal" as typified in Victorian conduct books by (for example) Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799–1872) or Mrs. Beeton (1836–1865).[41] The Angel in the House (1854) and El ångel del hogar, bestsellers by Coventry Patmore and Maria del Pilar Sinués de Marco, came to symbolise the Victorian feminine ideal.[42]
• Barbara Leigh Smith and her friends started to meet regularly during the 1850s in Langham Place in London to discuss the need for women to present a united voice to achieve reform. This earned them the name of the "Ladies of Langham Place", and included Bessie Rayner Parkes and Anna Jameson. They focused on education, employment and marital law. One of the causes they vigorously pursued became the Married Women's Property Committee of 1855. They collected thousands of signatures for petitions for legislative reform, some of which were successful. Smith had also attended the first women's convention in Seneca Falls, New York in America in 1848.[56][66]
• Smith and Parker wrote many articles, both separately and together, on education and employment opportunities, and like Norton in the same year, Smith summarized the legal framework for injustice in 1854 in her A Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women.[67] Playing an important role in the English Women's Journal, she was able to reach large numbers of women, and the response of women to this journal led to their creation of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW). The Langham Ladies continued to provide inspiration, infrastructure and funding for much of the women's movement in England for the remainder of the century.[citation needed] Smith's Married Women's Property committee collected 26,000 signatures to change the law for all women including unmarried.[56][66]
• Harriet Taylor published her Enfranchisement in 1851, and wrote about the inequities of family law. In 1853 she married John Stuart Mill, providing him with much of the subject material for The Subjection of Women. Taylor's relatively low profile after her marriage has been a subject of speculation, but Mill was perhaps in a better position to translate theory into action.[citation needed]
• Emily Davies was another woman who would encounter the Langham group, and with Elizabeth Garrett would help create branches of SPEW outside of London. While obtaining education remained largely a privilege rather than a right, the small group of women who were able to do so, were then able to campaign for women as a whole, realizing it was not just a portal to employment and financial self sufficiency but that the denial of education was tied to women's expectations and their self image of their potential and worth.
• Campaigns gave women the opportunity to test their new political skills, for disparate elements to come together, to join forces with other social reform groups. One had been the campaign for the Married Women's Property Act, eventually passed in 1882. Next was the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869, which brought together women's groups and utilitarian liberals such as John Stuart Mill.[70]
• Women in general were outraged by the inherent inequity and misogyny of the legislation and for the first time women in large numbers took up the rights of prostitutes. Prominent critics included Blackwell, Nightingale, and Martineau and Elizabeth Wolstenholme. Elizabeth Garrett did not support the campaign, though her sister Millicent did, later admitting the campaign had done good.
• However, Josephine Butler, already experienced in prostitution issues, a charismatic leader and a seasoned campaigner, emerged as the natural leader[71] of what became the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (1869).[72][73] This demonstrated the potential power of an organised lobby group. The association successfully argued that the Acts not only demeaned prostitutes, but all women and men too by containing a blatant double sexual standard. Butler's activities resulted in the radicalisation of many moderate women. The Acts were repealed in 1886.[citation needed]
• On a smaller scale was Annie Besant's campaign for the rights of match girls and against the appalling conditions under which they worked demonstrated how to raise public concern over social issues. |
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| European Union – origins of EU in WW2 (address a number of causes – economic, political, wars…etc.) |
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• 1945 – 1959 - wikipedia
A peaceful Europe – the beginnings of cooperation
The European Union is set up with the aim of ending the frequent and bloody wars between neighbours, which culminated in the Second World War. As of 1950, the European Coal and Steel Community begins to unite European countries economically and politically in order to secure lasting peace. The six founders are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The 1950s are dominated by a cold war between east and west. Protests in Hungary against the Communist regime are put down by Soviet tanks in 1956; while the following year, 1957, the Soviet Union takes the lead in the space race, when it launches the first man-made space satellite, Sputnik 1. Also in 1957, the Treaty of Rome creates the European Economic Community (EEC), or ‘Common Market’.
• The historical roots of the European Union lie in the Second World War. Europeans are determined to prevent such killing and destruction ever happening again. Soon after the war, Europe is split into East and West as the 40-year-long Cold War begins. West European nations create the Council of Europe in 1949. It is a first step towards cooperation between them, but six countries want to go further.
• 9 May 1950 — French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman presents a plan for deeper cooperation. Later, every 9 May is celebrated as 'Europe Day'.
18 April 1951
• Based on the Schuman plan, six countries sign a treaty to run their heavy industries – coal and steel – under a common management. In this way, none can on its own make the weapons of war to turn against the other, as in the past. The six are Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Founding Member States: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Swiss architect Le Corbusier marks a new trend with the opening (1952) of his selfcontained ‘vertical city’ (Unité d’habitation) in Marseilles, France. The stark appearance of this concrete complex provokes the nickname ‘The new brutalism’.
In Hungary, people rise against the Soviet-backed regime in 1956. In November, Soviet tanks appear on the streets of Budapest to putdown the protests.
The Soviet Union beats the United States in the space race by launching the first manmade space satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957.Sputnik 1 orbits the earth at a height of 800 km. In 1961, Soviet Union wins again with the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, whose spacecraft is just 2.6m in diameter.
25 March 1957
Building on the success of the Coal and Steel Treaty, the six countries expand cooperation to other economic sectors. They sign the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community (EEC), or ‘ common market ’. The idea is for people, goods and services to move freely across borders.
• With the ending of the Cold War, the nations of western Europe moved to take on a much more important role in global affairs. During the 1970’s and 1980’s the European Economic Community (EEC) widened it’s membership and became the European Community (EC), a political and cultural as well as economic organization. In 1979, Europeans voted in the first elections or the European Parliament, while the European Court of Justice gradually asserted the primacy of the European over national law. Then in 1991, the European Community (EC) became the European Union (EU), defined by France’s President Francois Mitterrand as “one currency, one culture, one social area, one environment.” The establishment of the EU meant visible changes for ordinary Europeans. They saw their passports replaced by a common EU document and border controls eliminated. The creation of a single EU currency – the Euro, which replaced many national currencies in 2002 – tore down one of the most significant economic barriers between European countries. At the same time, the powers of the European Parliament expanded and member states moved toward establishing common social policies such as labor rights. (p. 949) |
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In the fall of 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came as close as they ever would to global nuclear war. Hoping to correct what he saw as a strategic imbalance with the United States, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev began secretly deploying medium range ballistic missiles (MRBM) and intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) to Fidel Castro's Cuba. Once operational, these nuclear-armed weapons could have been used cities and military targets in most of the continental United States. Before this happened, however, U.S. intelligence discovered Khrushchev's brash maneuver. In what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy and an alerted and aroused American government, armed forces, and public compelled the Soviets to remove from Cuba not only their missiles but all of their offensive weapons.
The U.S. Navy played a pivotal role in this crisis, demonstrating the critical importance of naval forces to the national defense. The Navy's operations were in keeping with its strategic doctrine, which is as valid today as it was in late 1962. The Navy, in cooperation with the other U.S. armed forces and with America's allies, employed military power in such a way that the president did not have to resort to war to protect vital Western interests. Khrushchev realized that his missile and bomber forces were no match for the Navy's powerful Polaris ballistic missile-firing submarines and the Air Force's land-based nuclear delivery systems once these American arms became fully operational. Naval forces under the U.S. Atlantic Command, headed by Admiral Robert L. Dennison (CINCLANT), steamed out to sea, intercepting not only merchant shipping en route to Cuba, but Soviet submarines operating in the area as well. U.S. destroyers and frigates, kept on station through underway replenishment by oilers and stores ships, maintained a month-long naval "quarantine" of the island of Cuba. Radar picket ships supported by Navy fighters and airborne early warning planes assisted the U.S. Air Force's Air Defense Command in preparing to defend American airspace from Soviet and Cuban forces. Navy aerial photographic and patrol aircraft played a vital part not only in observing the deployment of Soviet offensive weapons into Cuba; but monitoring their withdrawal by sea.
As the unified commander for the Caribbean, Admiral Dennison was responsible for readying Army, Air Force, Marine, and Navy assault forces for a possible invasion of Cuba. He also served as the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. The aircraft carriers, destroyers, and Marine forces of the subordinate Second Fleet, under Vice Admiral Alfred G. Ward, were poised to launch air, naval gunfire, and amphibious strikes from the sea against Soviet and Cuban forces ashore. With speed and efficiency, other fleet units reinforced the Marine garrison at Guantanamo on Cuba's southeastern tip and evacuated American civilians. Dennison also coordinated the maritime support operations carried out by Canadian, British, Argentine, and Venezuelan forces.
Khrushchev, faced with the armed might of the United States and its allies, had little choice but to find some way out of the difficult situation in which he had placed himself and his country. President Kennedy did not press the advantage that the strength of U.S. and allied naval and military forces gave him. Thus, the Soviet leader was able to peacefully disengage his nation from this most serious of Cold War confrontations. |
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