Tag: war
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History of the Cold War. III. 1968-1991.
Prolonged political stagnation along with exceedingly low living standards, high degrees of waste and totalitarian state brutality with draconian legislation were characteristic of conditions in the eastern bloc nations, while the armed stalemate balance of terror characterised international relations between the western and eastern bloc of nations, with the underlying threat of mutual assured…
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History of the Cold War. II. 1947-1968.
The failure of the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers was a key postwar event in view of the position taken by the Soviet negotiators was thoroughly unambiguous: Stalin refused to move toward a definitive settlement in Europe, which could have partly been in reaction to the pronouncement of the Truman Doctrine two days after the…
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History of the Cold War. I. 1945-1947.
The end of the Second World War left Great Britain as no longer being a great power while it was practically bankrupt at the end of the war, and then increasingly less powerful during the process of decolonization that followed. The Soviet Union suffered heavier losses than any other country in the war, as they…
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History of the Second World War. V.
Nazi Germany faced additional setbacks on the southern front, until this advance was stalled until the end of the war. The Italians had been a liability that weakened the German strategic war effort, which only worsen. General Pietro Badoglio began armistice negotiations with the British and the Americans on 4 August 1943, as the…
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History of the Second World War. III.
The heaviest fighting of the war remained on the eastern front after the failure of a Blitzkrieg in Russia, which spared England from any threat of invasion, and the resistance movements throughout Europe was given fresh encouragement. The Russians had lost three million prisoners in 1941, and the USSR lost 63 percent of its coal…
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History of the Second World War. II.
Plans for the invasion of Britain, which proved to be implausible were scrapped. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder informed Hitler at a military conference on 17 September 1940 that the German navy lacked the sufficient strength and resources for an attempt to secure passage over the English Channel, which the Chief of the General Staff, Franz…
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History of the Second World War. I.
British political decisionmakers eventually suspected that Germany would not cease its aggression, but could do little more than issue an ultimatum, advising Germany that Poland would receive British assistance if Hitler invaded. Nevertheless, Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and forced a collapse in less than a month using a method of warfare known…
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History of the Interwar Years. II.
There were relatively peaceful living conditions and economic stability in Europe until the onset of the Great Depression that was initially triggered by the U.S. stock market crash of 28 October 1929 in the U.S., which was a representative situation of underlying worldwide problems. There were vulnerabilities in the global economy, which were exposed as…
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History of the Interwar Years. I.
There was prevailing uncertainty period after the First World War I due to the effects of imposing the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles (see Eurodocs, World War I Archive: Conventions and Treaties). The American President Woodrow Wilson articulated had expressed in his Fourteen Points peace plan called for economic and political equality of all…
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History of the First World War. III.
The war at sea was mostly low key, apart from a few exceptional incidents. The highly touted and costly German High Seas Fleet remained in port throughout the war while playing a mainly defensive role. Its main strength consisted of battleships and torpedo boats that were meant for naval battles, and a few cruisers…