Causes of the Cold War

The Cold War is still a bit foreign to me so I'm sure my perspective will change, but I think political causes were to blame here. Normally I would look towards economics without doubt, because everything normally results in money. But before the Cold War, I feel like people had learned their lessons economically from WWI; they saw that they needed to help other economies rebuild in order for everything to keep moving. Even the U.S. saw this in Germany. But politically, I think this is where it fell apart. Communism was still such a huge fear across the globe, and nations were being very protective in order to stop it from spreading. If a nation started to lean towards communism, they were bombarded and told to go the opposite way. With the USSR trying to rebuild itself and prosper once again through communism, western Europe was panicked because such a large nation could not become communism. It even came down to a giant wall being built to separate a nation; something I find truly ridiculous.
As for as socially, I'm unsure of how it played a role in the Cold War; I will be looking for what other people say about it. To me, it just wasn't a big factor, but I don't think you can discount anything that may have possibly aided in starting a major crisis.

My Prezi

My prezi was about the turning points of WWII. So the summary is: because Germany was fighting 2 fronts basically all at once (western and eastern) I picked what is considered the battle in each front that turned the tides of the war. In the West, it was the Battle of Britain; this is where Germany attempts to take control of Britain because they're the last remaining threat but Germany ultimately fails to do so. This is significant because 1: it was the first time Hitler's plans had greatly failed, and 2: had Germany been successful, Hitler would have completely taken the West and been able to focus all its energy on the East. So, in the East, the turning point was the Battle of Stalingrad; this is where Germany tried to push through to Moscow to take a hold of Russia, but horribly loss. It is significant because this was the battle that gave the Allies hope in defeating Hitler and Germany.
Here's the link:
http://prezi.com/wrzft540itkn/turning-points/

Hitler's Obsession

Alright, so, this reading is all about Hitler's and the High Command German Army's descent into Russia and Moscow. This author seems to write about Hitler's faults and weaknesses as a commander a little more heavily than we've read before. Most of this comes from Hitler's one, main obsession: glory.
 So I have two questions to discuss about this:
1) Hitler was completely untrained in commanding a military and made unrealistic strategies for the Army; so why did the commanders go along with it? They warned Hitler against his ridiculously suicidal plans but never actually stood up against him. Why? They had the masses so why not take a better, smarter course of action without his consent to show him what they were talking about? Was it because of the ever prominent Nazi fear?
2) Hitler and the German government were extremely frustrated with the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor and to declare war on the U.S. But this all changed when Pearl Harbor was such a success for the Japanese; Hitler upon seeing this immediately decided to declare war on the U.S. as well, going against the Tripartite Pact. If Pearl Harbor had failed, do you think Germany would have ever declared war on the U.S.?

Didn't they see the light?

The events leading up to the Great Depression have always been something that fascinated me. But what still gets me about the whole thing is the majority of the public's belief that everything was going to be ok. I just don't understand. The market dropped 9% within 24 hours, over 100,000 were unemployed within weeks, and hundreds of banks declared bankruptcy. Yet, President Hoover gave speech upon speech saying that the nation would be fine, the economy would bounce back in no time. Umm, really? I would have been a total skeptic long before any of these major events happened. I mean even today, the news and President say we are out of the recession. But I don't believe it just yet. And neither do those around me. My parents, my brother just out of school, and my family friends are still feeling the pinch and hundreds of others are still unemployed. I just don't understand why you would give your country such a false hope, and why the country would even believe a single word of it.

Book review

For my book review i read the memoir, Alicia: My Story, by Alicia Applebaum-Jurman. She was the only one to survive the Holocaust in her family and the book (being VERY long) tells every detail of her accounts from the beginning to the end. Alicia first lost her oldest brother, then her father, 3 other brothers one by one, and finally her mother; who she watched personally be shot by a firing squad. The thing that struck me most in the novel was how she described the slow Nazi arrival in her town. She described it as being very slow, and that the soldiers were very kind to her and her community. They bought things from the shops, mingled with people, and seemed very generous. It was after almost 2 months before they adruptly started to kill and take people away. I had never had this perspective before; i had just assumed that the Nazis immediately came in and started to slaughter the Jews, but apparently this wasn't so.

Is there any middle ground?

Throughout history we've seen a pattern of extremity in times of dispair, especially in the political process. The chapter reading talked about how protracted political clashes and economic crises throughout Europe forced more and more people torward the extremes of the political spectrum; specifically totalitarian governments. On the opposite end there was nations looking for government to butt the heck out. Why is this? Why is it so difficult in times like this to choose a middle ground? For me, it would seem logical after such a radical change in the world from a war that you would step back and rethink things. But, then again people weren't doing this during the war and this could possibly be just a continuation. But what specifically pushes people to such opposites ends? Is it just the desperate need for a solution ASAP?

Reading Pages 80-98

As many people mentioned in previous blogs, technology was a new and prominent development in WWI. Was it technology that gave the Central Powers such a head start in the war front? Germany was the first to use Chlorine gas (which the British attempted to use also and failed), phosgene gas, U-boats, and unrestricted submarine warfare. The Allies didn't have any real new, major developments until the armoured tank. Was technology what gave the Central Powers such momentum, but was it also what hurt them in the end?