Cold War

pg.325- 3. Cold War means that unlike a Hot War or "explosive war" there is no physical fighting aspect to it, and it is basically a side conflict where two or more nations disagree or dislike one another and stay away from each other or attack in other non-physical ways such as proxy wars, so that instead of the countries fighting each other, they have other substitute countries fighting and the cold war countries pick different sides. 


pg.327- 2. I think that the Soviet Union would of only believed in maybe freedom of religion because of its diversity in its empire, but I do not know its past beliefs in religion, so therefore I am uncertain. The other three (freedom of speech, freedom from want and freedom from fear) are unimportant in the eyes of the Soviets because in a Communistic country you are afraid that the government would kill you for disagreeing with them, which is violating freedom of speech and freedom from fear. Then the entire idea of Communism is shaped around the fact that everyone is equal, and so therefore you must sacrifice some of your wants and get the stuff you only need for the greater good of society. 


pg.329- 2. I think that a couple of the most urgent circumstances that the Marshall Plan should attack would be the coal shortage because of the cold winters in Europe, and then the food shortage would come next, because all those people at least needed food to get through being homeless, and then housing needed to be re-established because millions of people lost their homes. 
3. Greece was the start of  American aid in Europe by financing British troops to stay in Greece while the royal government settled in from the crisis of the civil war, thereby avoiding the spread of Communism and when the "Truman Doctrine" was introduced, it basically stated that Americans stop further spreading of Communistic ideals throughout Europe, so when Czechoslovakia became a Communist country, we stepped up Marshall Plan aid in order to perhaps persuade countries that Americans are nicer than Communists and therefore you should be on our side because we give you aid. 

pg.330- 2. I think that these cartoons are criticizing the Marshall Plan because in Source 27 an American is having to pay a lot of money for Truman to spend on other countries and a billion dollars (not to mention 17 billion) is a lot of money spent on someone else, even if it is a nice thing to do. Then  in Source 29, Marshall is calling a Soviet a "comrad" and kind of giving him a choice and a say in this which is saying that we are going against everything that Stalin is doing, but yet we cannot go directly against him because he still is a superpower and needs to be talked with for foreign business. 
3. (Explained above basically.)


Focus Task   
Stalin I must inform you of the actions that the Americans are taking in order to try to win Europe over. They formed a Doctrine called the "Truman Doctrine" that states that if we as a nation should continue to spread glorious Communism, that they will try to stop it with whatever way most affective. This should be considered a threat and we should ourselves from possible American attack in the future. Next is this "Marshall Plan," which is an agreement that could allow the Americans to send aid into distressed parts of our nation, but I advise against this, for the Americans will only try to make our nations more dependent on American currency and aid than our aid, and perhaps start a rebellion. They are fools for even thinking that we would do such a thing, but they are trying to win over the rest of Europe by handing out aid.