Cold War Map

Joseph Stalin

*Born December 18th, 1878 in Gori, Georgia
*He studied at a theological seminary where he read Marx
*In 1922, he was made the general secretary of the Communist Party.
*In 1930, he purged the party of the “enemies of people”, resulting the execution and exile of many people.
*In the WWII, he joined Roosevelt and Churchill as his Allies and defeated Germany.
*After the WWII, The Soviet Union entered to the nuclear weapons age and ruled most of Eastern Union.
*He died because of a stroke in March 5th, 1953.

More info at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/stalin_joseph.shtml

Berlin History

*In 1946, the demarcation line between West Germany and East Germany is safeguarded.
*1948, Berlin is divided in two different currency zones.
*1949, Federal Republic of Germany is founded and German Democratic Republic is also founded.
*1953, Uprising of East Berlin building workers against the imposition of increased working norms, suppression by Red Army tanks.
*1961, The Berlin sectorial border between East and West is closed.
*1963, President John F. Kennedy visits Berlin.
*1987, President Ronald Reagan urges the Soviet leader to tear down the Berlin Wall.
*1989, Berlin Wall is Opened.
*1990, Germany is reunited.

More info at: http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/history/berlinwall-timeline.htm

Mao Tse Tung

*Born December 26th, 1893 in Shao-shan, Hunan province.
*He served briefly the army
*In 1919, He engaged political activity.
*He became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party
*In early 1950´s, he served as a chairman of the Communist Party, chief of state and chairman of the military commission.
*He died on September 6, 1976 in Pekin
More info at: http://www.paralumun.com/warmao.htm

Kim Il Sung/Koren War

*Began in 1950 and ended in 1959
*Began when the North Korean troops invaded South Korea
*The grittiness exhibited in Chosin by the 1st Marine Division surrounded by a vast Chinese force.
*Hill fighting during the last years of the conflict.
*The two Koreas were separated.

More info at: http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent1?file=index

Kim Il Sung

*Born in North Korea, April 5th 1912
*In 1929, He was jailed for political activism
*He was set free and joined the Korean Independence Army
*In 1937, he defeated the Chinese police
*In 1940, he scored his biggest victory at Daiamlugou
*1941, The Soviet detained Kim Il Sung and his band of guerrillas and were forced into the Red Army.
*1945, He and his wife returned to Korea
*He died in 1994.

More info at: http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/kimilsun.htm

Arbenz/Armas/CIA

*In 1950, Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala.
*The first CIA effort to overthrow the Guatemalan president which was a collaboration with Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza that supported the general Carlos Castillo Armas was approved by president Truman in 1952.
*CIA Headquarters began generating subject titles such as “Guatemalan Communist Personel to be disposed of during Military Operations”.
*PBSUCCESS carried a $2.7 million budget for psychological warfare and political action.
*Arbenz resigned on June 27, 1954 because of the CIA´s psychological war and they wanted to murder him but the CIA found the option unnecessary.*CIA installed Castillo Armas in power and hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed.

More info at: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

Nikita Krushcev

*Born in 1894 in Kalinova.
*He joined the Communist Party and the Red Army and fought in the civil war.
*He became Premier of the Soviet Union in 1958
*He conceived the idea of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba to restore the balance of power in the Cold War. The Soviet military assured him that Americans wouldn´t discover the missiles, but the discovered them.
*Kennedy intended to invade Cuba. And Khrushchev made the U.S. make a pledge that they wouldn´t invade Cuba.
*His attempts to raise the farm production failed and the rate of the industrial groth slowed and in consequence he was removed from the power.
*He died in 1971.

Fidel Castro

*Born in Mayari, Cuba in 1926.
*He graduated from the University of Havana with a law degree.
*Castro assembled a small force and attacked the Moncada Army Barracks in the Santiago de Cuba.
*He was captured and sentenced to fifteen years in prison and when released, he exiled in Mexico where he began to train a group of revolutionaries.
*In 1956, He invaded Cuba and finally in 1959, Batista fled the country.
*The relations with the U.S. were declined shortly after he took the power.
*President Kennedy authorized an attempt to overthrow the Cuban dictator and it failed.
*When Khrushchev offered to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, he agreed.
*Castro had little effect on the outcome of the crisis and felt betrayed by the U.S.S.R. The crisis solved few of Cuba´s problems and left the country to deal with the U.S. alone.
*He has worked to improve education, housing and health and Cuba has suffered from a troubled economy.

John F. Kennedy

*Born in Massachussetts in 1917.
*He joined the U.S. Navy
*He was anti-communist
*In 1952, he won a seat in the Senate.
*He became the U.S. President
*When he heard about the Cuban Missiles, he felt betrayed.
*With the help of the EX-COMM, Kennedy got out of the crisis.
*He was assassinated in 1963 in Texas.

Allende/Pinochet/Nixon

*Allende is elected as the President of Chile and is the world´s first Marxist leader of a nation.
*Richard Nixon wanted to disestablish Allende.
*Nixon helped Pinochet.
*Military units stationed throughout Chile led by Augusto Pinochet. All the phone lines were cut.
*Valparaíso was taken in stages.
*When the President Allende heard the news, he immediately removed himself to La Moneda.
*The President made a radio announcement that left the people frozen and by mid-morning, the Palace was surrounded by tanks.*At 1:30, Patricio Guijón made the announcement: The president had committed suicide.

Reagan/Sandinistas/Contras

*Ronald Reagan, President of the U.S. became implacably opposed to the Sandinista government.
*In El Salvador, guerrilla fighters from the Faribundo Marti Liberation Front became involved in a bitter conflict with the Salvadoran army and a civil war erupted in Guatemala.
*Reagan increased military aid to the beleaguered governments. And at the same time he began to engineer an overthrow of the Sardinistas.
*Reagan allocated funds to the contras and to the CIA for the purpose of destabilising the Sandinista regime.
*The Reagan government illegally transferred to the contras the proceeds of clandestine sales of military equipment supplied to Iran.*Journalists exposed what was going on and at first sight, it would seem that Reagan´s policies failed because the Sandinistas were not overthrown militarily but indirectly Reagan achieved his goal, to stop socialism spreading to the rest of Central America.

Ho ChI Minh/Domino Theory

*Ho Chi Minh was born in Nguyen Sinh Cung in Central Vietnam on May 19, 1890
*He studied at the Lycee Quoc-Hoc school
*In 1912 he moved to Grance where he became active in socialist politics. He visited United States during the WWI.
*In 1920 he became a founding member of the French Communist Party.
*He became famous because of his petition to the Versailles Peace Conference demanding Vietnam´s Independence.
*He went to Moscow and met Lenin, then to China to work in the Soviet mission with Chiang Kai-Shek´s government.
*He returned to Vietnam and founded the Viet Minh, the League for Independence of Vietnam.
*While he was in Europe, he recruited the Vietnamese exile community.
*He served as a guerilla training instructor in Central China.
*In May 1940, most Vietnam was under Japanese control and he made out a meeting to form the League for the Independence of Vietnam, he spent a lot of time searching for allies and support for the war that was about to come.
*In 1945, Viet Minh´s forces launched an insurrection to seize power throughout Vietnam.
*Democratic Republic of Vietnam was created with Ho Chi Minh as president.
*He tried to search a settlement with France and he managed to reduce the distrust of rival nationalist leaders and reached agreement on a coalition cabinet.
*In 1946, the alliance between the Viet Minh and the nationalists broke down and in December war broke out.
*The war ended in 1954 with the Vietnamese victory, he made France sign another agreement and Vietnam divided in two: the communist north and the noncommunist south.
*He died on September 3, 1969.

More info at: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/coldwarfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=people.details&thisunit=0&peopleid=12

Osama Bin Laden

*He was born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia
*He studied management and economics at King Abdul Aziz Univesity.
*In 1979, there was a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan where he supported the Afghan resistance and U.S. supported Afghans too.
*After the Soviet withdrawal, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia and founded an organization to help veterans of the Afghan war.
*Because of the Iraqui invasion of Kuwait, American troops were allowed to station in Saudi Arabia.
*He was expelled form Saudi Arabia in 1991 and went to Sudan.
*He was responsible for attempting to bomb U.S. troops in Yemen and attacking them in Somalia. He returned to Afghanistan.
*In 1998, he called for all American and Jews to be killed and again, was responsible for bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tarzania.
*His organization is called al-Qaeda and has approximately 3,000 followers.
*He attacked the World Trade Center on U.S. in September 11th, 2001.
*He has warned that “America will not live in peace”.

More Information at: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/osamabinladen.html