Cold War

The Cold War is the name given to the relationship that developed primarily between the USA and the USSR after World War Two. The primary American goal of 1945-1948 was to rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II and to contain the expansion of Communism, represented by the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey to counteract the threat of Communist expansion in the Balkans. In 1948, the United States replaced piecemeal financial aid programs with a comprehensive Marshall Plan, which pumped money into the economy of Western Europe, and removed trade barriers, while modernizing the managerial practices of businesses and governments.

In August 1949 the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, there by escalating the risk of warfare. Indeed, the threat of mutually assured destruction prevented both powers from going too far, and resulted in proxy wars, especially in Korea and Vietnam, in which the two sides did not directly confront each other.

In the decades after World War II, the United States became a global influence in economic, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs. Beginning in the 1950s, middle-class culture became obsessed with consumer goods.

In the 1980s, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid 1980s, the new Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland. They reached a breaking point when Gorbachev refused to use Soviet troops to support the faltering government of East Germany in late 1989. Within weeks all the satellite states broke free from Moscow in a peaceful wave of revolutions. The pressures escalated inside the Soviet Union, where Communism fell and the USSR was formally dissolved in late 1991. The United States remained as the world’s only superpower.

Worl War II

World War II , also known as the Second World War, was a global war that was underway by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's nations including all of the great powers eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million people serving in military units. During the war over 16 million Americans served in the United States military, with 290,000 killed in action and 670,000 wounded.Japan tried to neutralize America's power in the Pacific by attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which catalyzed American support to enter the war and seek revenge. During the first 2 years of the global conflict, the United States had maintained formal neutrality, while supplying Britain, the Soviet Union and China with war material through Lend-Lease, as well as deploying the US military to replace the British invasion forces in Iceland. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it resulted in 50 million to over 75 million fatalities. These deaths make World War II by far the deadliest conflict in human history.

The world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September, 1939 with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and Britain. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany formed the Axis alliance with Italy, conquering or subduing much of continental Europe. Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories between themselves of their European neighbours, including Poland. The United Kingdom and the other members of the British Commonwealth were the only major Allied forces continuing the fight against the Axis, with battles taking place in North Africa as well as the long-running Battle of the Atlantic.

In December 1941, Japan joined the Axis, attacked the United States and European territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. In 1943, with a series of German defeats in Eastern Europe, the Allied invasion of Italy, and American victories in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all fronts.


In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the United States defeated the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific Islands.

The war in Europe finished in May 1945 when the Russians sacked Berlin and the Germans surrended. The US, British and French troops, along with their other allies, and the Soviets, took the surrender jointly. The War in the Pacific ended in August 1945 following the US Atomic bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki earlier that month. The Japanese were already sueing for peace prior to the Atomic bombs being dropped. The Japanese surrended formerly on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay with the US, Britain and Australia at the signing ceremony.

Three Little Pigs

Orientation

Who / What ?

• Three little pigs
• Big bad wolf

 

Three little pigs and The wolf

Where ?

• Three little pigs' houses (straw house, stick house, brick house)

When ?

• One night when the big bad wolf feels hungry

 

Complication 1

What happened one day ?

• One big bad wolf saw the pig with the straw house and feels hungry. Then the wolf tried to blow down the house of the first little pig that was made from straw. 

 

Resolution 1

What happened then ?

• The straw house blown down and the big bad wolf ate the first little pig

Complication 2

And then ?

• The big bad wolf saw the pig with the stick house and feels hungry. Then the wolf tried to blow down the house of the second little pig that was made from sticks. 

Resolution 2

What happened next?

• The sticks house blown down and the big bad wolf ate the second little pig.

 

Complication 3

What happened next ?

• The big bad wolf saw the pig with the brick  house and feels hungry. Then the wolf tried to blow down the house of the third little pig that was made from bricks. 

• The big bad wolf failed to blow down the brick house and tried to enter the house from the chimney.

 
 

Resolution 3

What happened next ?

• The third little pig placed a cauldron of boiling water under the chimney

Re-orientation

What is the end of the story?

• The big bad wolf climbed the brick house’s chimney and fell into the boiling water.

• The third little pig was saved the brick house remains.

How is the ending?

• The surviving pig invites his mother over and ate the wolf togother.

 

Happy or sad ?

• It is a happy ending story. The third little pig with the brick house lives happily ever after.