w. 12 - NATO + Warsaw Pact

Here is some material that we used in class on Friday, 24 March


The informational video about NATO

w. 11

After our enriching week in Berlin, it's time to get back in the saddle and continue with our unit on the Cold War.

We lose Monday's lesson to the studiedag. So Friday is our first lesson, and we will be starting with the Marshall Plan speech, and then we will read the Soviet response to the Marshall Plan. You will find both of these in one document on Vklass. If you find that you usually need a little extra time to read English texts, you can go ahead and get a head start on the MP text.

Also, surprise! -- well, not really, because I'm telling you here -- there will be a little map quiz on Friday. So have a look at Europe during the Cold War.

Marshall Plan

Here's a documentary about the Marshall Plan:

The Cold War and the Olympics

While in Berlin, we heard from one museum (maybe it was the Stasi Museum, so then it would be only Sa that heard this, I'm not sure) about the state-sponsored doping programs that East Germany had. The links below will lead you to some wonderful graphics that compare the number of medals won by each country. First off, I'll note that sports, and the Olympics in particular, became one of the fields where Cold War adversaries tried to outdo their "enemies," so sports became very serious business in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In the countries behind the Iron Curtain, the government was in charge of the various training programs for the Olympic teams. In the U.S., however, the coaches and training programs were not under the management of the government.

The winter Olympics, from 1924 to 2010 (which is the last time I found this graph).
The summer Olympics, from 1896 to 2008

In these graphics, look at what happens to  East Germany from the 1968 to 1980. During these years, France and Great Britain had populations more than three times that of East Germany. Today we know that state-sponsored doping was behind the remarkable improvement in East German performances.

If you scroll down below the graphic, you can find a list of the medal breakdown for each country.

As a side note, you can look at the state-sponsored doping that appears to still be going on in Russia, as many sources have presented over the past year.

Here's a screen shot of the graphic -- but you can make it "play," so that the bubbles move and change from year to year.

w. 6

words for w. 6

blockade
airlift
partition
occupation zones
sector
plunder
submission
atomic bomb

Iron Curtain
Truman Doctrine
containment
U.S. Congress (United States' bicameral legislative body)
totalitarian
oppression 
 
people:
Winston Churchill
Harry Truman
 

w. 5 - Cold War - Russian Revolution - Atlantic Charter

Words for FRIDAY, 3 February. See below for slides.

hostility
rivalry
trade barrier
tariff
liberate
capitalism
Iron Curtain

names:
Winston Churchill
FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Josef Stalin
Harry Truman  

On Friday we discussed the following:

- the Soviet-German non-Aggression Pact (1939)
- the Katyn Massacre (1940)
- the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union
- the Atlantic Charter (1941)
- overall death figures for WWII, where the Soviet Union had a loss of life of over 20 million people
- and we started talking about Germany and its role in a post-WWII Europe

We also line up the Allies and the Axis powers of WWII

Allies: GB, France, U.S., USSR
Axis: Germany, Italy, Japan

***************
MONDAY, 30 Jan., we'll talk about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. There are  discussed in Chapter 30, Sections 1 & 2.

Here are terms connected to that event.

Bolshevik
proletariat
communism
czar
dictatorship
legislature (the body of the government that makes laws)
civil war
Red Army (Bolsheviks)
White Army (supports the czar)
abdicate
discontent
provisional (temporary)
captialist, capitalism 
communal
totalitarianism
collectivism, collective farms
command economy /planned economy
five-year plan
ideology


Names we'll discuss
Czar Nicholas II (Romanov)
Vladimir Lenin
Josef Stalin
Leon Trotsky 
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels 

 

 

SOVIET HISTORY

bodies from the Katyn Massacre in Poland, 1940

w. 4 - Cold War

On Friday, 27 Jan., we'll start working with the Cold War. I'm going to start a list of words that are relevant to this unit -- which will have many terms that are needed to work with the material in it. I'll keep this list at the top of the blog.

Cold War terms:

• anti-Semitism
• Soviet Union, USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
• xenophobia - främlingsfientlighet
• acquisition - förvärv
• annex - add to one's own territory through appropriation (taking)
• prosperity - välstånd; prosperous     
• atrocity/atrocities - illdåd
• ally/allies, the Allies
• alliance
• charter (kontrakt)
• treaty (avtal, pakt)
• devastate - ödelägga
• seize 
• Holocaust - Förintelsen
• ideology
• reform
• satellite (used to talk about countries in associated with the Soviet Union.) (definition:   something that is separated from or on the periphery of something else but is nevertheless dependent on or controlled by it: satellite offices in London and New York.) 
• reparations - gottgörelse
• armaments - rustningar
• occupation
• currency - valuta
• dissolution - upplösning
• bloc - block (Soviet bloc - Sovjetblocket)

 

 

w. 50

12 December 2016, Monday (posting 10:30 a.m. Tuesday -- may make some further additions/changes)

A first set of slides has been uploaded on Vklass.


ENGLISH
We've been focusing on abbreviations that you can use when writing your notes.

Here is a table of abbreviations you can think about incorporating into your notes:

Brief summary of material we've gone through regarding Swedish history:
(See also slides in pdf files on Vklass)

1 - Gustav Eriksson coming to power in Sweden, and taking Sweden out of the Kalmar Union. Sweden is now independent. As a result of the warring against Christian II, large debts are created.

 Sweden by the end of Gustav I's reign:

-Sweden united
-Sw. centrally governed
-Sw. has own foreign policy
-Sw. has own military force
-Sw. has substantial degree of self-subsistence
-Sw. has stable transfer of power
-Sw. is still independent

I noted that all of these are still true today with the possible exception of the high degree of self-sufficiency. And, indeed, three days after I said this to you, the Swedish news came with this report. Here's the webpage with the story from P1.

2 - Gustav I (today known best as Gustav Vasa) introduces the Reformation to Sweden, changing the state religion from Roman Catholic to Lutheran.

3 - GV centralizes power in Sweden, in large part through his ability to weaken the power that regional leaders had, and by creating a tax and administration system that was centrally governed.

4 - Succession of the throne: In 1544, GV, with the help of the Riksdag, introduces a new law establishing transfer of power to the monarch's eldest son, and then following by age and sex, the other children of the monarch. Sweden becomes a hereditary kingdom (arvsrike), which contributes to a more stable transfer of power.

Here's a link to the Swedish Royal Court's webpage with information about the laws of succession.

And here is the Riksdag's page on the Swedish Constitution. It explains things such as the lack of freedom of religion for the monarch, and that the government must give consent to prince and princesses of the royal house before they can marry -- otherwise they risk forfeiting the right to the throne.

5 - Expansion of territory/loss of territory.
We discussed various issues that can be associated with the addition of territory -- including economic issues (taxes, trades, resources as well as defense). We will connect back to the point that Swedes are "out and about" when in connection to intellectural development. One thing I want you to see is that by reflecting on issues (e.g., what does it matter if Sweden has control over Skåne and Bohuslän) you can come up with different ideas. You might not always have the historical information to back up an idea, but you have something that can then be tested, discussed, analyzed.

Here's a website where you can see the change of territory over time -- different maps than what I have put in the pdf of slides: Time Maps

Here are maps of Sweden from the webpage:

6. Literacy: We discussed how the switch from Catholicism to Lutheranism can be connected to an increase in literacy. We will contine and discuss how this high rate of literacy can be connected to intellectual development, political change, and industrialism in Sweden.

Gustav Vasa Bible:

7. Change in political power over time. I am planning on discussing this on Friday.

w. 49

Monday, 5 December 2016

I handed back the papers, along with comments.

One of the things I noted was the importance of avoiding opinion. Even though opinion is not allowed in history writing, it is still possible to present a point of view through logic and to then support that view with evidence. For example, here is an opinion:

It is wrong for women not to be able to have control of their own bodies.

 Here is an argument that can then be supported with specific information:

Women who are denied access to birth control are in many cases prevented from being able to decide if and when they want to bear children. And unplanned pregnancies can result in women being forced to abandon their education, it can create economic hardships, and it can interfere with the ability to get and keep a job or to develop a career.

The second example is in line with the opinion, but it uses logic based in evidence (which would then need to be provided further in the text to support these statements). 

SWEDISH HISTORY

We started with Swedish history. I can provide you with the slides I showed in class. If you missed class, you want to get notes and ask questions about what isn't clear. I will wait until after Friday's lessons before I put up the slides on Vklass.