Europe exam...

History 450
Midterm exam part II, spring ’11…for March 30, 2011

Directions Part I(70%): Prepare the following essays, using readings, videos, lectures and any outside reading or reflection to make your points. You need to prepare all three, unless you are clairvoyant, because you don’t know which one will be asked. On occasion, I as Benevolent Class Dictator will allow YOU to choose, but that doesn’t always happen, so be ready for any of them.

The United States and Great Britain expressed in the 1941 Atlantic Charter sa their hope that post-World War II Europe would reform on the basis of self-determination, each nation determining for itself what form of government it wanted. Yet by l948, Europe was divided into two hostile camps, with a Communist east and a democratic west. Write an essay in which you explain how this unfortunate turn of events came to pass.

The Berlin airlift marked a dramatic escalation in an argument that had started before the end of World War II, namely: what should be done with defeated Germany. What did the Allies decide to do with that state, and how did the old Nazi capital, Berlin, bring the US and Great Britain to serious confrontation, even brinksmanship with the Soviet Union?

When(not if) you take your friends to Paris, you will all go inspect the Arch of Triumph on the Champs Elysees, the main street of the French capital. You all find near the tomb of the Unknown Warrior from World War I several additional commemorations, including two dedicated to Frenchmen who fell in Indochina and Algeria in the l950s. As someone who knows something of contemporary France, what will you tell them when they ask you why there were French troops in those nations in the l950s, and how will you describe the outcome of those campaigns?

Directions Part II(30%) Identify, briefly discuss and GIVE THE SIGNIFICANCE of the following in a paragraph or two. You will do THREE of FOUR on test day.

Marshall Plan, Nuremberg Trials, Operation Overlord(“D-day”), “Iron Curtain.”

P.S. For those who went down in flames on the geo midterm, there will be a chance to redeem yourself, rise from the ashes, Phoenix-like, after I get back from England on April 6(didn’t get an invite for the Wales-Middleton nuptials, regrettably).