Competing Blocs

1. Competing Blocs • The breakup of Europe’s empires and the demise of European world leadership led to the division of the world into three blocs • The United States and Soviet Union–superpowers • Both believed in respective ideologies had universal application • United States–liberal capitalism • Soviet Union–Communism • Size • Possession of atomic weapons • Each embodied a model of civilization that could be applied globally

2. Competing Blocs • Third World countries fought internal wars over the legacy of colonialism • Internal and external produced tensions and conflicts that challenged the three-world order

3. World War II and Its Aftermath • By the late 1930s, German and Japanese ambitions to expand and to become, like Britain, France and the United States, colonial powers brought these conservative dictatorships into conflict with France, Britain, the Soviet Union, and eventually the United States • World War II was more global in scope and in context than World War I • Distinctions between citizens and soldiers were further eroded • The acts of barbarism robbed Europe of any lingering claims to cultural superiority • In the war’s wake, anti-colonial movements successfully pressed their claims for national self-determination

4. World War II and Its Aftermath • The war in Europe • The war began with Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 and Britain and France's decision to oppose it militarily • Within two years, Germany and Italy controlled virtually all of Western Europe • The German tactic of blitzkrieg, or lightning war proved decisive • Britain escaped conquest, but German planes waged aerial war on British cities • In June 1941, the Germans invaded and nearly conquered the Soviet Union

6. World War II and Its Aftermath • The war in Europe (cont’d) • Nazi occupation brought terror and displacement to Europe • The war required more laborers. With men off fighting, women became highly sought after for the workforce • 12 million foreign laborers were brought to Germany for war production goals

7. World War II and Its Aftermath • The war in Europe (cont’d) • The German offensive halted in the Soviet Union with defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942 • For the next two years, the Red Army slowly forced German troops from Eastern Europe • British and American troops battled German forces in the air and on the seas and in northern Africa • Allied Forces finally opened up a second front in Western Europe with the successful D-Day invasion of June 1944 • In May 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally

8. World War II and Its Aftermath • The war in Europe (cont’d) • The war in Europe had devastating human and material costs • The Soviets lost up to 20 million people, both military and civilian • Aerial bombings in German and British cities brought unprecedented hardships • Two-thirds of Europe’s Jews were killed systematically in German “death camps” • Nazis killed or imprisoned gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, and Slavs

10. World War II and Its Aftermath • The Pacific war • Throughout the 1930s Japan had expanded its influence in Asia • In 1931 it conquered Manchuria • In 1937, it invaded and conquered much of coastal China • During this war, Japanese troops inflicted terror on the Chinese population, the most notorious example being the “Rape of Nanjing” • German occupation of Western European countries in 1940 left their colonies in Southeast Asia at the mercy of Japanese forces

12. World War II and Its Aftermath • The Pacific war (cont’d) • Throughout the 1930s Japan had expanded its influence in Asia (cont’d) • The United States became the chief obstacle to Japanese expansion and, as a result, Japan launched an attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 in hopes of a surprise knockout blow • The strategy backfired and the United States quickly mobilized for total war • Germany and Italy also declared war on the U.S. in light of their Tripartite Pact with Japan

13. World War II and Its Aftermath • The Pacific war(cont’d) • Throughout the 1930s Japan had expanded its influence in Asia (cont’d) • In 1942 Japan seized the British-ruled Southeast Asian colonies of Singapore, Malaya, Burma, etc. • Japan dubbed its new empire the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere • The Japanese exploited these areas despite their calls of “Asia for Asians” • Millions were drafted for labor • Two hundred thousand mainly Korean “comfort women” were forced to serve as prostitutes for the Japanese army

14. World War II and Its Aftermath • The Pacific war (cont’d) • Throughout the 1930s Japan had expanded its influence in Asia (cont’d) • American mobilization tilted the balance of power in the Pacific against Japan by 1943 • In August 1945, President Harry Truman, in the hope of saving the American army the monumental task of invading Japan proper, authorized the use of atomic weapons to force Japan to surrender • Japan surrendered a few days after two bombs destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • The bombs left environmental devastation by polluting air, land, and groundwater

17. The Beginning of the Cold War • The Second World War left Europe in ruins • Physically the continent was a wreck, and psychologically, old regimes had lost credibility • Socialism and Soviet-style communism attracted wide support • Rebuilding Europe • The principal Allies in the fight against Hitler—the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain—distrusted each other and disputed how to address Europe’s postwar recovery

19. The Beginning of the Cold War • Rebuilding Europe (cont’d) • The United States decided to “contain” Soviet influence where it already existed in Eastern Europe thus initiating a “cold war” between the former allies • This policy contributed to the division of Germany into mutually hostile states loyal to opposing sides in the cold war after the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949 • To shore up democratic governments and capitalist economies in Western Europe, President Truman announced the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in 1947, which promised massive economic and military aid • These efforts culminated in the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949; a military alliance between Western Europe and North America against the Soviet Union

21. The Beginning of the Cold War • Rebuilding Europe (cont’d) • To Stalin, containment looked like a direct threat • Stalin believed the Soviet Union deserved to be dominant in Eastern Europe in order to protect its postwar security • The Soviet Union responded to the Western Alliance with a military alliance—the Warsaw Pact—between itself and the nations it dominated after the war in Eastern Europe in 1955

23. The Beginning of the Cold War • The Nuclear Age • The arms race led to stockpiling of nuclear weapons and multiple delivery systems on both sides • These armories, however, prevented all-out direct war between the two antagonists

24. The Beginning of the Cold War • The Nuclear Age(cont’d) • Open confrontation emerged in Asia, where there were no well-defined Soviet and American spheres, such as existed in Europe, after the Second World War • The Korean War embroiled American, North Korean, South Korean, and Chinese troops in a contest to control the Korean peninsula between 1950 and 1953 • This conflict energized America’s anti-Communist agenda and led to new alliances • In 1951, the U.S. signed a peace treaty with Japan, whereby the U.S. committed itself to defending Japan in case of invasion, stationed troops and ships there on a permanent basis, and initiated large-scale financial aid to rebuild the economy

27. Decolonization • After the war, anti-colonial leaders set about dismantling the European order using the lessons of mass politicization and mass mobilization that had developed in the 1920s and 1930s • The process of decolonization and nation-building that followed exhibited three patterns • Civil war such as in China • Negotiated independence in India and much of Africa • Incomplete decolonization where large numbers of European settlers complicated the process • The Chinese Revolution • After the war the Communist Party vowed to achieve full political and economic independence for China

28. Decolonization • The Chinese Revolution (cont’d) • The Communist Party had gained momentum over two decades • In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist regime drove the Communists into the mountains • Soon Mao Zedong took over the leadership of the party • In 1934, under attack from the Nationalists, they embarked on a 6,000 mile “Long March” to the northwest of the country to escape further attacks • Under Mao, the party reached out to the vast rural population to fight the Japanese • Mao’s emphasis on a peasant revolution helped him win broad support in China and served as a model for other Third World revolutionaries after 1945 • Mao also emphasized women’s liberation

30. Decolonization • The Chinese Revolution (cont’d) • The Communist Party had gained momentum over two decades (cont’d) • After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Communists and the Nationalists commenced a bloody civil war • The Nationalists, having lost credibility after their losses to the Japanese and because of their postwar corruption, proved no match for Communist forces and fled to the island of Taiwan in 1949

33. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa • In India and Africa, the British and the French, realizing that only violent coercion would sustain their empires in the postwar era, withdrew in an orderly manner

34. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • India • Although independence came nonviolently, India came dangerously close to civil war immediately afterward • Within the Indian National Congress Party, there was much disagreement over the direction of India after independence • Gandhi wanted a nonmodern utopia of self-governing villages • Nehru looked to Western and Soviet models for establishing a modern nation-state

35. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • India (cont’d) • Although independence came nonviolently, India came dangerously close to civil war immediately afterward (cont’d) • The Muslim minority increasingly questioned the direction of Indian nationalism that was often predicated on Hindu myths and symbols • Riots broke out between Muslims and Hindus in 1946 • Middle-class leaders were alarmed at the potential for radical peasant movements

36. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • India (cont’d) • Although independence came nonviolently, India came dangerously close to civil war immediately afterward (cont’d) • On August 14 and 15, 1947, British forces left a partitioned subcontinent between a Muslim majority Pakistani nation-state and a Hindu majority Indian nation-state • Within days 1 million people had been killed in sectarian violence • 12 million immigrated between the two countries

37. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • India (cont’d) • Although independence came nonviolently, India came dangerously close to civil war immediately afterward (cont’d) • On August 14 and 15, 1947, British forces left a partitioned subcontinent between a Muslim majority Pakistani nation-state and a Hindu majority Indian nation-state (cont’d) • Gandhi’s fast in protest of the violence helped to bring about peace, but he himself was assassinated a few months later by a Hindu extremist • Nehru and the Congress Party developed a workable system in India over the next decade that emulated Soviet style economic planning and Western democratic institutions

38. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • Africa for Africans • World War II and the period immediately after saw the ranks of nationalist movements swell • African migrated to cities in search of a better life • Faced with rising nationalist demands, European powers agreed to decolonize • Ghana (British Gold Coast) became the first independent state • By 1963, all of British Africa except Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) was independent

40. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • Africa for Africans (cont’d) • Charismatic nationalist leaders took charge of political powers • Nkrumah led Ghana • Azikiwe ruled Nigeria • Decolonization in French-ruled Africa followed a similar path • At first, the French attempted assimilation into metropolitan France • The French electorate balked at these policies and under President de Gaulle, France dissolved its political ties in Africa

42. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • Africa for Africans (cont’d) • Among the new leaders in Africa, the sense of creating something different from existing patterns was strong • Nkrumah, Azikiwe, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania looked to Africa's pre-colonial traditions that would enable the continent to develop an African form of socialism without going through depredations of capitalism • African personality was steeped in communal values of social justice and equality as opposed to European individualism

43. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • Africa for Africans (cont’d) • Among the new leaders in Africa, the sense of creating something different from existing patterns was strong (cont’d) • Nkrumah, Azikiwe, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania looked to Africa's pre-colonial traditions that would enable the continent to develop an African form of socialism without going through depredations of capitalism (cont’d) • Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal best epitomized these views i) He and others developed the idea of “Negritude,” which claimed that people of African descent were more humane and had stronger communal feelings than Europeans

45. Decolonization • Negotiated independence in India and Africa (cont’d) • Africa for Africans (cont’d) • Among the new leaders in Africa, the sense of creating something different from existing patterns was strong (cont’d) • Nkrumah, Azikiwe, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania looked to Africa's pre-colonial traditions that would enable the continent to develop an African form of socialism without going through depredations of capitalism (cont’d) • Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal best epitomized these views (cont’d) ii) He promised to assimilate what was good from France but not to be assimilated into France