Korean War

       The Korean War was a three year civil war between South Korea (democratic) and the the Communist North Koreans, lasted from June 25, 1950 to July 23, 1953. The war started when the Soviet influenced North Koreans, led by Kim IL Sung, sent nearly 75,000 men across the 38th parallel. At the time the 38th parallel was the line dividing the North and South. Soon after the war had began the Peoples Republic Of China gave military forces to the North along with aid wile at the same time the US Joined the fight along side the South Koreans.
      In mid-September of 1950 the US launched a huge amphibious assault on Inchon destroying the North's defenses and and pushing far into North Korea. Then suddenly when the United Nations thought they had won the fight the Chinese launched a massive counter attack that drove the South all the way back past the 38th parallel. The fighting suddenly turned into a bloody stalemate lasting two years. The US stationed off shore posed a huge threat to the North Koreans and the Chinese, wile they constantly bombed the area with naval strikes and air strikes. Three years after the Korean War had begun the UN and North Korea signed an armistice creating an armistice line just North of the 38th parallel and also a two mile wide demilitarized zone between the North and South. Though nether side won the war the US was successful by halting the spread of Communism east of China.
      Overall 178,426 were killed on the UN's side, 40,000 of which were US soldiers, wile 752,282 were killed on the North's. Over 2.5 million civilians were killed. During the war US General MacArthur attempted to go to an all out war with the Chinese in what he said they could stop Communism. MacArthur sent a letter proposing his ideas to Joseph Martin because he knew he would leak it to the press and possibly start a war with China. Though for Truman this was his last straw and he fired MacArthur for insubordination on April 11. In Korea the civilian death rate exceeded those of both WWII and the Vietnam wars combined, being one of the bloodiest wars in history.                           

 Cordel Bever

Sources:

• http://www.history.com/topics/korean-war
• http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/korean-war-2
•  http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/kowar/kowar.htm

WWII Notes

A Fierce Green Fire

      The film A Fierce Green Fire by PBS focused almost entirely on current around the world pollution and environmental hazards like whaling in the oceans, the cutting down of the world's rain forests and chemical pollution of the ground and its water. The film includes several different sections all following different people trying to drive a point across their governments and try to enforce change. The film really focused on the different groups and organizations that sprung up in times of environmental disaster all around the world. The film was very well done and extremely inspiring.

A Fierce Green Fire." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.

Trying to Move Towards Solar Energy: Today less than one tenth of the energy produced worldwide comes from solar panels. Solar panels are used to capture the sun's energy that it gives off and turns it into electricity. This way of capturing energy is extremely clean and if used properly could power entire towns and maybe cities, it also makes virtually no sound when in use. Today the US, Germany, and Japan are the leaders in the production and use of solar energy. The solar panel companies like SEIA are working on ways to improve solar energy and bring it to the majority of people in the US. Solar energy would be great replacement form coal energy when it creates no pollution wile coal burning emits harmful substances into the air and water. Hopefully one day the leading form of energy on the planet will be from solar panels.
     
One way to help would be to donate to the various solar companies and/or buy and install solar panels for your home or business.

- Cordel Bever

Sources:  

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/solar-power-profile/       

http://www.seia.org/about/solar-energy

Band Of Brothers

E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne

Band-Of-Brothers

      The WWII nonfiction book Band Of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose follows an elite fighting group through their battles in Europe. The boys of E Company, or Easy Company, were an airborne assault force that would drop from C-47s into the heat of battle. They were the first to drop into the Battle of Normandy on D-Day with the task to take out naval artillery guns pointed at Utah Beach. Without their courage on this historical day there would have been little to no chance for the men on the beach to have made it up; furthermore, they could easily have been the most important players in the battle.

      The men from Easy were the best trained men of the war in Europe, they were able to push themselves harder and longer than any other group of men in in the war. Thanks to their training and dedication to their work in the States they came into battle for the first time with better knowledge than the battle hardened Veterans. After the Battle of Normandy the airborne and men from the 506th Regiment were tasked to secure the town of Carentan, France to set up a field HQ (Head Quarters). The battle was a house by house street by street battle, though they had little resistance at times it took 8 days for the men of Easy to secure the town of Carentan. When the 101st were nearing the end of the battle they received a message confirming a large German armored counteroffensive on the town within the next couple of hours. The three different companies in the town took up different defensive positions on the outskirts of the town; one to the left, one on the right, with Easy Company right in the middle. They took positions behind hedgerows, large hills ranging from 4 to 8 feet used to separate different plots of farmland, providing good cover and  an advantage from the attacking German tanks. As the German armor started to climb the rows of hedgerows it would expose the tank's unarmored underbellies and give the airborne just enough time to take out tanks with a rocket to their underside. The battle raged on for a wile longer until the US's 1st tank battalion ant the 1st mechanized infantry battalion came in and pushed back the Germans. The town of Carentan was finally captured by the US on the 12th of June, 1944, and the battles outside the town ended on the 14th.     
      The 101st Airborne of Easy Company were the major backbone of all the attacks and defensive actions they were apart of in the battles of Europe, their intense training and combat abilities made them nearly unstoppable. From the Invasion of Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest and every battle in between the 101st served their country well and fought with a force never seen before in modern combat.            

WWII Vocabulary and Information

Cost Plus Contract: The government agreed to pay a company whatever it cost to make a product plus a guaranteed percentage of the cost as profit.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation: The RFC, a government agency set up in during the Depression, was now permitted to make loans to companies to help them cover the cost of converting to war production. 

Tank Factories: The automobile industry replaced their car production with the mass production of tanks, trucks, jeeps and artillery. 

B-24 Liberator: Henry Ford launched a project that created an assembly line for the B-24 bomber at Willow Run Airport near Detroit. They built 8,600 bombers by the end of the war. 

Liberty Ship: The Liberty Ship was the basic cargo ship used during the war. The ships were welded instead of riveted making them cheaper and harder to sink. They were built at the Kaiser Shipyard. 

Problem With The Training Of US Troops: The amount of people that were drafted into the army initially overwhelmed the army's training camps, and many recruits were forced to live in tents and use temporary facilities. They also suffered through equipment shortages. Troops carried sticks instead of guns, threw rocks instead of grenades, and used trucks with the word 'TANK' on the side to simulate a tank. In an early battle a soldier raised his rifle in the air wile pointing at it and shouted "how do I load this thing?" that shows how bad the training was at the beginning of the war.

'Double V' Campaign: A campaign that urged African Americans to support the the war in order to achieve a double victory- a victory over Hitler's racism in Europe and over America's racism at home. 

Role of African Americans in The War: African Americans were first allowed to fight in combat in WWII after the Double V campaign convinced the Army Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps to accept African Americans. Many African Americans went on to be great heros, for example the first all African American Army Air Force unit the 99th Pursuit Squaron which fought in several battles in the Mediterranean. 

Role of Women in The War: The US Congress first allowed women into the armed forces in May of 1942, though they were not allowed in combat they served as nurses and more in more administrative areas. Over 68,000 women served as nurses in the Women's Army Corps and others like it during the war. 

Noor Inayat Khan

    Noor Inayat Khan was born on the first of January, 1914 in Moscow, Russia to an Indian father and an American mother. Her family moved to London then Paris. She later fled to England during the fall of France and joined the WAAF (Woman's Axillary Air Force) in late 1942, before becoming a radio operator shortly after. In June of 1943 she was flown to France as a radio operator for the Prosper network in the French Resistance in Paris. Most of her group was arrested by the Germans, but she escaped and continued to travel from place to place giving out messages to England about German plans. In October, she was betrayed by a French woman and was turned in and arrested by the Gestapo. She had kept copies of the messages that she had sent to London and the Germans found them and used them to send messages to the British. The Germans gave out false information and told them to send more agents, so they could capture them. Later in November of 1943, Khan was sent to Pforzheim prison in Nazi Germany where she was tortured to try and get information out of her but she never said a word. A year later, in 1944, she and three others were transferred to the Dachau concentration camp where they were shot and killed on the thirteenth of September. Khan was awarded the George Cross in 1949 for her bravery during the war. France also honored her service and bravery by awarding her the Croix de Guerre. Her story lives on in London where they made a memorial to honor her courage in the second world war. 

By Cordel Bever
Sources:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/inayat_khan_noor.shtml
Sources:  http://www.noormemorial.org/

U.S. Great Depression Notes

I. Intro- the United States plunges into a nationwide depression that affects the nation for the worst until the presidents make efforts to pull it out in 1929 when the stock market crashes. 

II. Causes (The causes of the great depression were Uneven Prosperity, Overproduction, Worker issues)

A. over speculation (Define, how important)- Instead of investing in the future of a company people would invest their money betting that the stock market would keep rising. Caused people to invest heavily in stocks during the 1920s.

B. Govt Policy- The government started to give, or invest, money to the banks to try and save them from closing. 

C. Unstable Econ- The economy started to become unstable and thousands pf people lost their jobs and became unemployed.

1. Uneven prosperity-"Rich got richer, poor go poorer" The factory workers did not money to even buy the products that they made, so the factories lost money.

2. overproduction- Factories produced too many goods that no one needed causing them to lose money and lay off workers.

3. Worker issues / farm issue- Thousands of workers were laid off causing mass unemployment. Farmers in the great planes were hit by the Dust Bowl killing all their crops and also lost almost all business in Europe. 

                                                      
III. Effects

A. Poverty- Many people lost their jobs and were forced to live in Shantytowns, large communities of people that live in tents or makeshift houses on the outskirts of cities. 

B. Society- Most of society started to break down as hobos, people who would sneak unto railroad cars for a ride somewhere else, and other people who lost their jobs could not find work or a place to live. People were forced to eat at soup kitchens and get free handouts of bread.

C. World- the US at the time after the war was the world’s largest creditor to the European nations affected by WWI. When the stock market crashed in the States it immediately hit Europe with the same effects and sent the world into a Depression.   

IV. Solutions

A. Hoover- US president Hoover came into office in 1929-1933 with hopes to turn the depression around, but he failed in all ways as he could not stop the depression.

1. Volunteerism- Hoover set up soup kitchens and other things that people could volunteer for to help people in need.

            
            2. Public Works- Government financed building projects. Gave out some jobs.
            
            3. Hawley-Smoot- A tariff that raised the price on imported goods. 

4. RFC- Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Created to try and make loans from banks to try and pull them out of the depression.

B. Roosevelt- US president from 1933-1945 famous for his New Deal and pulling the economy out of the depression.

    
         1. New deal- Roosevelt's policies for ending the depression (his 15 points).

a. alphabet soup- The term used to refer to the agencies and programs that Roosevelt created in his New Deal.

example: CCC- Civilian Conservation Corps was used to find men between the ages 18 and 25 recruit them for paid labor.

example: TVA- Tennessee Valley Authority built dams and power plants across the South to improve industry.

example: NRA- National Recovery Agency controlled industry, production, and regulated fair competition. 

example: CWA- Civil Works Administration provided jobs on construction sites.

b. Criticism- Roosevelt got a lot of criticism from Left(Democrats) and the Right(Republicans) on his new deal. The Left believed that he was doing too little for the government being liberal. The Right believed he was making too many regulations on business and state being conservative.   

   
       2. 2nd new deal- Roosevelt was reelected and used his time to make more reforms.

a.- WPA or Works Progress Administration held huge construction projects to give people jobs.

b.- CIO or Committee for Industrial Organization set out to help industrial unions.

c.- NLRB or The National Labor Relations Board held elections to try and create new unions.

 V. Criticism

     A. Political Criticism (ex. Came from both the Right and Left)

     B. Conservative, Right, Republican- Did not like regulations on big business. 

     C. Liberals, Left, Democrat- Wanted more for business and government.
            ex: More freedom for individual states and business.
            ex: More Restriction on business and more involved government.
VI. Effectiveness

A. Changes in US- Government became more involved and increased the amount of employed Americans.

B. Unions- Increased the amount of union members by 10 million from 2 million and increased workers.

C. Culture-The American people started to make more art like paintings and literature and also construction began to take on a more American look.

VII. Conclusion- the US in 1929 slipped into a huge recession which caused a nation wide depression known as the Great Depression. Two presidents, Hoover and Roosevelt, tried to save the economy, but it lasted until 1939 when WWII started. The stock market crash caused the US to make new reforms to help the economy and the US work force.