Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

Apartheid was a system that the government of the Africa used from 1948 to 1994. This system segregated blacks from whites and did not grant blacks full citizenship. Black people could not vote and many places were restricted to only one race. Blacks and whites could not have relationships with one another and were separated in schools. Africans could not vote. This caused many Africans to start a boycott. One man wished to unite blacks and whites rid Africa of Apartheid. This man is Nelson Mandela. Nelson spent 27 years in prison simply for trying to make a better life for his people, a life where they could live freely. The white South African government's plan to silent Nelson backfired. Instead Nelson's followers stood by him and continued to fight for freedom. Apartheid was soon abolished from Africa after the release of Nelson from prison and he recieved the Nobel Peace prize and was elected president of the United States within five years of his release in 1990.

African Independence

Africa fought hard to win it's own freedom and win its independence from Europe. When Africans returned home from WWII they refused to still be apart of the British colonies. Both the Europeans and the Africans fought in WWII to win their freedom, so why should they return home to see that they are still being ruled by the Europeans? The British let more Africans be nominated to the legislative council but this was not what the Africans wanted. They wanted a chance to have their own electives and the freedom to rule their own countries. Kwame Nkrumah studied the United States and felt that Africans should have the same freedom. Nkrumah started to organized boycotts. The British government felt threatened and put Nkrumah on trial for going against the British empire. After many years he was found not guilty. Even thought he won the trials he was thrown in jail many times. This did not stop him from trying to gain freedom for his people. The British empire finally came to a economical conclusion that Africa should have its independence. Nkrumah spent many years as the president of Africa and is still living today.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The horror of a nuclear war never came closer than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Photos were taken from a plane that showed Cuba building nuclear bombs. This was on October 15, 1962. Long debates on weather or not the U.S. should invade Cuba went on for days. On October 27, Cuba demanded nuclear U.S. missiles to be taken out of Turkey in exchange for the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Just one day later, people start to cool down after hearing that Cuba would return the missiles to the Soviets. This meant that they were putting a great deal of trust into the U.S. President John F. kennedy honored their trust and the crisis was over.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

NATO is a group of countries in North America and Europe that formed an alliance with one another. If one NATO country was attacked, all NATO countries would come to that countries aid to help them. This also allowed Russia to recover after WWII. The Soviets were becoming an increasing threat towards the NATO. The military of the Soviets were becoming just as powerful as the Western Powers. This made many Europeans members start to doubt weather the U.S. would defend them if they were attacked by the soviets. As the U.S. was fighting a war in Vietnam, Europeans were afraid that the soviets were building up their military force. NATO managed to prevent getting attacked by the soviets although communist governments were forming in the alliances.

The Soviet Union and its satellite countries formed a organization of their own called the Warsaw Pact. This was created in response to the NATO. Warsaw was a attempt to strengthen the soviet's control over satellite countries. This was a organization where all the communist countries united. Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union made up the Warsaw pact. East Germany got out of the pact to join West Germany and unite once again. The USSR started to withdraw troops to aid other countries part of the Warsaw pact. With only six countries left in the Warsaw pact, the organization soon decided to disband.

Film Lesson: "The Right Stuff"

This film showed the competition between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.. Americans lived in fear that the Joseph Stalin would try to spread communism across the world. The U.S. felt it had the advantage after they dropped the atomic bomb because they were the first country to have a atomic bomb. This glory did not last long, soon the Russians made even more powerful bombs called hydrogen bombs (H-bomb). The Americans then made H-bombs of their own. The Russians then made the first satalite to go into space, this start the competition of the astronauts. We put a monkey into space and they put a human. We were determined to get ahead of the Russians. We put a group of astronauts into space who became American heroes, which is what "The Rights Stuff" is about. We eventually got ahead of the game by being the first to put a man on the moon.

Film Lesson: "Schindler's List"

"Schindler's List illustrated how horrible the Holocaust really was. Jews were treated inhumanely and killed by the millions. They moved all Jews poor and rich into ghettos. Jews were forced to live in small crowded buildings. One of the more powerful scenes for me was when the children were separated from their parents just to be killed because they wanted to kill the next generation of Jews. Many Jews hoped to be put in labor camps because it was the best chance they had at living. Auschwitiz was the one place where Jews felt that they would live. Schindler did not let many of his workers get killed. The pictures of the killing of Jews for no reason at all will never leave my mind. Schindler knew that there was no justice to the killing of the Jews, he tried to save as many Jews as he could.

Film Lesson: "Night and Fog"

"Night and Fog" showed just how inhumane the jews were treated. Im sure many people were surprised to find out how serious the holocaust really was. This is one of the worst cases of genocide of all time and it was done in such orginized manor, as if the nazis truly felt they were making a better world. "Schindler's List" was a more hollywood version of the holocaust and some of the events were not true, but for the most part it showed a good historical demonstration on the everyday hardships the jews had to face. "Night and Fog" showed more effectively just how harsh the jews were treated but "Shindler's List" showed how much they had to go through for mant years. Both of these films give a deep understanding to what it was like to be jewish back then and made me feel that such things should of never happened and should never happen again.