1960s East German Poster about the 1948 Western airlift against the Eastern Berlin Blockade |
UCSB
Hist
133c, L9 & 10: lectures on Jan. 30 & Feb. 1, 2006 (L08; L11) by Professor Harold
Marcuse (homepage) |
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Turnarounds |
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Introduction (back to top)
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Two Turnarounds(back to top) The first turnaround was heralded by US Secretary of State James Byrnes' in a Sept. 1946 policy speech in Stuttgart. Here are two key excerpts from the speech (starting about 3/4 of the way through; full text of Byrnes' speech at US Embassy.de):
The second turnaround was caused by the June 1948 Soviet attempt to starve the Western occupied zones of Berlin into submitting to a Soviet takeover. Before we analyze that event, I introduced some theory into the course, which we will draw on for the rest of the quarter when analyzing major events. |
Model of Historical Causality (back to top) Several years ago I began developing this model to help me teach about why historical events happen. The basic premise is that most causal factors in history can be usefully categorized as follows (I settled on these names to create the mnemonic EIEIO, after the Old MacDonald song, with peOple admittedly being a stretch):
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Division of Germany (back to top) How can this model be applied to the historical chain of events that led to the division of Germany?
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Berlin Blockade and Airlift (back to top) What happened?
What about the causes of the blockade?
For more information see the Wikipedia Berlin Blockade page |
June 17, 1953 Uprising (back to top) What happened? Responding to pressure to work faster, construction workers in East Berlin marched to government officials to demand a repeal of the new norms. Disappointed with the response, they called for a general strike across the country. Soviet forces were deployed to force strikers off the streets. Timeline:
Why did Ulbricht remain in power after 1953, when Khrushchev repudiated the course that Stalin had set (and which Ulbricht wanted to continue in East Germany)?
What were the causes of the 1953 uprisings?
For more information, see:
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