Tag: USSR

Who Lost Czechoslovakia?

That’s right boys and girls time for the old professor to drop some history.

No Irene this is not a pre-WW2 post about some misguided attempt to divert another massive war in Europe….but rather the aftermath of WW2 and the rise of the Iron Curtain.

After the war the Soviets and their lackeys marched through Eastern Europe to extend their influence to confront the Allies growing influence.  Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, the Baltics and then there was Czechoslovakia.

It is often taken for granted that all European nations involved in the early Cold War, save Germany, fell naturally onto one side of the Iron Curtain or the other. Yet Czechoslovakia was not pre-ordained to become part of the Soviet sphere. There were multiple opportunities for the United States to influence its position on the political map of Europe.

Czechoslovakia emerged from the Second World War unaligned. Hitler and Stalin had not allocated it in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Stalin and Churchill had not included it in their secret 1944 ‘percentages’ deal, which designated spheres of influence in eastern and southern Europe. The victorious Allies had not discussed its orientation at Yalta or Potsdam. Both the Soviets and the Americans had liberated it. But whatever cards Washington had to play, diplomatically and militarily, it gave most of them up in 1945.

‘I believe that Russia wants to and will cooperate’ in Czechoslovakia, President Roosevelt told the Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, a democrat unaffiliated with any party, in February 1944. Red Army officials, however, made clear to their Czech counterparts that the country would be brought within the Soviet sphere. What capacity the US Army had to countervail was circumscribed by the fateful decision of Generals George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower to stop its own advance 50 miles west of Prague.

The Red Army, which had been 150 miles further from the Czech capital than General George Patton just before the war’s end, marched into Prague on 9 May 1945. It was one of its easier victories, but also one that had great subsequent historical significance. ‘We could have liberated Prague’, lamented one bitter US embassy official. ‘After the war we spent a lot of time trying to convince the Czechs that they weren’t part of the Eastern Bloc. But no matter what we said, the Soviets came to Prague first.’ The Czech Communists used this to their advantage, proclaiming it as evidence that only the Russians cared about the Prague citizens being brutalised by the Nazis.

In the months that followed, the US War Department agitated for a complete withdrawal of US troops from Czechoslovakia. There was, Ambassador Robert Murphy said from Germany on 31 August, no ‘overriding political necessity’ for their presence in the country. In Prague, the US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Laurence Steinhardt, was appalled. He argued that withdrawal would make the Czechs ‘feel that they had been morally as well as physically abandoned by the Americans at the very time they were just beginning to show signs of courage in standing up to the Russians’. No one knew for certain how many Soviet troops were in the country at the time, but estimates spanned from 165,000 to more than twice that. President Truman decided to write to Stalin on 2 November proposing a simultaneous US and Soviet withdrawal by 1 December. Given that such a deal would tip the military balance of power in the country overwhelmingly to the Soviets, who would have hundreds of thousands of soldiers available near its borders to smother the country as necessary, Stalin agreed.

https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/who-lost-czechoslovakia

Looks like Chamberlain was not the only ‘do-gooder’ that failed the Czechs.

The Czechs have been the butt of political games that failed them and made their lives so much more worse than before.

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Why Did Russia Let The Republics Go?

Ever wonder (probably not) if Ukraine is so important to Russia why then did they allow it to break away?

The news from Ukraine is redundant….pretty much the same day after day…..US spends like a drunken sailor for Ukraine…..Refugees are still pathetic…..Russia fires a rocket somewhere and the words of defiance on both sides continue….

Now a little historic background for those that have an inquiring mind…..

As the conflict drags on and involves more and more participation by the West, mainly the US, some of us struggle to understand just what went wrong.

With the war raging in Ukraine some people, granted not many, have asked the question how did it all come to this?

Basically they are asking what happened to the old USSR that it eventually lead to the many conflicts that have popped up over the last 25 years or so.

For answer we need to look back in Russian history just a bit….that is if you would like to understand what has happened to bring about the wrath on Ukraine.

The break up of the Soviet Union led eventually to the conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, and now Ukraine….the only way to understand the situation is to look back to 1991 when the break up began…..

“Why did the Russians, despite all that one would expect from them given the histories of the downfalls of empires, decide not to fight and to let the empire fall?” asked Serhii Plokhii, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, at a 29 April 2013 lecture at the Kennan Institute. Plokhii discussed the fall of the Soviet Union in the context of the last five months of the Soviet Union in order to explain why it was not accompanied by the violent conflicts triggered by the collapse of previous empires.

Plokhii argued that the fall of the Soviet Union is a unique case in the history of empires: “Russia let most of the republics go without a fight, without a struggle.” While there were slogans and campaigns for independence among the Union republics in the months before the collapse, none were campaigning for the complete disintegration of the empire. Rather, each was struggling against the central authority to augment its own independent power base. Even the Baltic states, the most independently minded of the republics, operated along these lines. Other republics, such as those in Central Asia, were not struggling at all against the Union for political independence.

It is common for scholars to mark the Soviet Union’s de facto end in August 1991, when Boris Yeltsin suspended the activities of the Communist party on the territory of the Russian Federation. However, Plokhii stated that this action alone did not precipitate the end of the USSR and independence of its constituent parts. Plokhii contended that only the exit of the Baltic States was inevitable at that moment; the status of other republics like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Ukraine was not fully understood until December 1991.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-let-the-republics-go-revisiting-the-fall-the-ussr

If more info is needed then another source may assist your understanding…..

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/24/1066861022/how-the-soviet-unions-collapse-explains-the-current-russia-ukraine-tension

Sad few will actually care what the causes are…they have boiled their knowledge down to Ukraine good…..Putin Bad……and the US needs to risk everything to prove the points.

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Ukraine–Historical Background

I am one of those beleagued bloggers that try to help my readers make sense of what went wrong in Ukraine that would lead up to Vlad the Invader attempting to invade Ukraine…..I will admit that most do not want to think about it they will settle for the propaganda spread by their favorite news source.

But I try and will probably fail…..but I can sleep nights knowing I did what I thought was right.

This conflict has been raging for over 2 months….and there has been very little info in the media to try and explain just what went wrong that a war had to be used to solve the situation.

This is my small attempt to help in some form of clarification…..

There are points in Ukraine history that could be part of the problem….like the Clinton NATO thing…..the election of Zelensky……but did you know that Bush I made a promise to the USSR?

The US government today likes to pretend that it is the perennial champion of political independence for countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain. What is often forgotten, however, is that in the days following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington opposed independence for Soviet republics like Ukraine and the Baltic states.

In fact, the Bush administration openly supported Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to hold the Soviet Union together rather than allow the USSR to decentralize into smaller states. The US regime and its supporters in the press took the position that nationalism—not Soviet despotism—was the real problem for the people of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.

Indeed, in the case of Ukraine, President George H.W. Bush even traveled to Kyiv in 1990 to lecture the Ukrainians about the dangers of seeking independence from Moscow, while decrying the supposed nationalist threat.

Today, nationalism is still a favorite bogeyman among Washington establishment mouthpieces. These outlets routinely opine on the dangers of French nationalism, Hungarian nationalism, and Russian nationalism. One often sees the term nationalism applied in ways designed to make the term distasteful, as in “white nationalism.”

When nationalism is convenient for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its European freeloaders, on the other hand, we are told that nationalism is a force for good. Thus, the US regime and mainstream media generally pretend that Ukrainian nationalism—and even Ukrainian white nationalism—either don’t exist or are to be praised.

In 1991, however, the US had not yet decided that it paid to actively promote nationalism—so long as it is anti-Russian nationalism. Thus, in those days, we find the US regime siding with Moscow in efforts to stifle or discourage local nationalist efforts to break with the old Soviet state. The way it played out is an interesting case study in both Bush administration bumbling and in the US’s foreign policy before the advent of unipolar American liberal hegemony. 

https://mises.org/wire/1991-when-america-tried-keep-ukraine-ussr

As I always state…there is more to a story than the one-sided crap the media would have you believe.

The more you learn…the more you know….

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Does Anyone Remember The Cambridge 5?

A History Sunday……

Probably only UK visitors will be the only ones that will remember and then only those that are aging….like me.

The Cambridge Five were the most notorious of all the spies who worked for the Soviet Union. This British quintet were exceptional for a number of reasons: while they worked independently, they knew the identities of one another; they spied at a critical time (during the Second World War and the early Cold War); the content of their espionage complemented each other, as each worked in different parts of the government. And the amount of information they provided was unsurpassed.

The five were recruited while students at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s and each would go on to have successful dual careers as British civil servants and Soviet spies. Kim Philby (1912–88) spent most of his career working for the British intelligence agency MI6, including a period as head of Soviet counterespionage and as MI6 liaison officer to the CIA in Washington DC. Donald Maclean (1913–83) had a successful career in the Foreign Office, working on atomic and military matters. Guy Burgess (1911–63) worked briefly for MI6, but also spent some time in the Foreign Office, working in London on propaganda, and then in the British Embassy in Washington.

From the mid-1930s through the early 1960s, the Soviet Union benefited from the services of five British traitors. Reams of classified documents transferred from British files and offices to those of the Soviet’s. During the height of World War II and the Cold War which followed, classified information shared between the United States and Great Britain received an eager welcome from the Soviets. The traitors sent so much information to their Soviet handlers that some in the NKVD/KGB questioned its value. Others were simply overwhelmed by the amount of data received and had insufficient time to properly analyze it all. Much of the damage done by the group originally labeled the Cambridge 4, later expanded to 5 when another traitor’s activities came to light, remains unknown.

This Spy Ring Betrayed the US and British to Soviet Intelligence

These spies did some major damage to the US and the UK in their sell-out to the Soviets.

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And The Wall Came Tumbling Down

09November in Germany is filled with lots of history….I shall let Padre Steve take on from that statement…..https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/770114/posts/2478338726

This is a bit of a departure from normal posting technique for IST…but it is a historic event…and we love history…..

Nope not some religious rant about he walls of Jericho….something more important…the 30 year anniversary of the beginning of the end…….first the Berlin Wall….09 November 1989 the wall came tumbling down.

Least we NOT forget.

First we should know the history of why it was erected at all….and then why it came down…..

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-berlin-wall-28-year-history-1779495

Try to remember that events of that November…..

Nearly 30 years ago, in the night of November 9-10, 1989, East German border police opened the gates at crossing points in the Berlin Wall, allowing masses of East Berliners to stream through them unhindered.

This started a night of unbridled celebrations as people crossed freely back and forth through the Cold War barrier, climbed on it, and even danced and partied on it.

The signal for the mass breach of the previously heavily guarded wall was a fumbled announcement in a press conference by the Socialist Unity Party (SED) Party chief of Berlin, Günter Schabowski.

https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-100812

Will this day be remembered?

The fall promised a bright new world without the USSR and the divisive politics that the Cold War brought about.

You know, it’s strange. There are certain moments that you and everyone in your generation never forget. For instance, I can tell you exactly where I was – eating a 25-cent hamburger in a diner that might have been called the Yankee Doodle in New Haven, Connecticut – when a man stuck his head in the front door and said, “The president’s been shot.” That, of course, was John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and I have little doubt that, if you asked just about anyone else my age, they’d have a remarkably specific memory of that moment, too.

But here’s the strange thing that TomDispatch regular and former Boston Globe columnist James Carroll brought to my mind with today’s piece on what may qualify as the single most important historical event of my life: the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. I have no idea what I was doing or where I was that November 9th in 1989 when I first heard that the forever structure dividing East from West that symbolized the two-superpower world of the Cold War was coming down. I have just vague memories of TV images of crowds surging and the wall being whacked at by people with sledgehammers

What the Dismantling of the Berlin Wall Means 30 Years Later

A good retrospective……for those that would like to remember….

It was on 9 November 1989, five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest, that the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany from West Germany crumbled.

East German leaders had tried to calm mounting protests by loosening the borders, making travel easier for East Germans. They had not intended to open the border up completely.

The changes were meant to be fairly minor – but the way they were delivered had major consequences.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50013048

It appears that this event means NOTHING….and why should it….it only changed the world as we had known it and gave way to the crippling globalization with which  we have a love/hate relationship….so why look back?  Why try to remember what went wrong/right?

I was eating dinner of a ‘Wheel Burger’, a local famous burger and fries and watched the TV as I dined and enjoying my ice cold Miller….how about you?

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16 October 1962

2 days ago…a memory……my bad….all the silliness, the craziness of the last couple of days and I missed posting this bit of history……an important piece of history….

A day us old farts will never forget……ever hear of the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Let us look at the event and the timeline…..

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis

This was a huge deal for about 2 weeks……us older Americans remember just how the situation played out……or did we?

John F. Kennedy and his advisers were stunned to learn that the Soviet Union was, without provocation, installing nuclear-armed medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. With these offensive weapons, which represented a new and existential threat to America, Moscow significantly raised the ante in the nuclear rivalry between the superpowers—a gambit that forced the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. On October 22, the president, with no other recourse, proclaimed in a televised address that his administration knew of the illegal missiles, and delivered an ultimatum insisting on their removal, announcing an American “quarantine” of Cuba to force compliance with his demands. While carefully avoiding provocative action and coolly calibrating each Soviet countermeasure, Kennedy and his lieutenants brooked no compromise; they held firm, despite Moscow’s efforts to link a resolution to extrinsic issues and despite predictable Soviet blustering about American aggression and violation of international law. In the tense 13‑day crisis, the Americans and Soviets went eyeball-to-eyeball. Thanks to the Kennedy administration’s placid resolve and prudent crisis management—thanks to what Kennedy’s special assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr. characterized as the president’s “combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve, and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated, that [it] dazzled the world”—the Soviet leadership the world”—the Soviet leadership blinked: Moscow dismantled the missiles, and a cataclysm was averted.

Almost every word of that statement is FALSE.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/

Just another Cold War situation that could have boiled over into a real life war…….and calmer heads prevailed…..

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Manchurian Offensive

We here on IST have had a bit of a discussion on the Second World War and the acts that were undertaken to end it. Basically we were discussing whether the bombs dropped were necessary.

The entry of the USSR into the war in the Pacific made Japan think that their position was hopeless was brought up….I thought I would look into that event and what were the repercussions.

At one minute past midnight on 9 Aug 1945, or 61 minutes after the declaration of war, Soviet troops organized in three fronts poured into Japanese-occupied northeastern China, a region also known by its historical name of Manchuria. Northeastern China had been governed by the Japanese-sponsored puppet regime of Manchukuo since 1932. The Soviet troops were of the Far Eastern Command under the overall command of Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, who devised a giant pincer movement against the unprepared Japanese troops. In Vasilevsky’s plan, the Transbaikal Front under Marshal R. Y. Malinovsky was to attack from the west across the Inner Mongolian desert and over the Greater Khingan mountain range, with Mukden (Shenyang), Liaoning Province, China as the primary target; the attached 36th Army was to break off after the initial invasion and head toward Harbin and Qiqihar to meet the 2nd Far East Front. The 2nd Far East Front under General M. A. Purkayev attacked in the center largely in a support role only, with the primary objectives of securing Harbin and Qiqihar, upon the successful completion of which, the front was to move toward the port of Lushunkou (Russian: Port-Artur; Anglicized: Port Arthur) of the city of Dalian, Liaoning Province after the 1st Far East Front completed its primary objectives. Finally, from the east over the Lesser Khingan mountain range, the 1st Far East Front under Marshal K. A. Meretskov was to capture the cities in east, including Changchun; its secondary objective was to cut off Japanese escape routes into Korea, and its tertiary objective was to invade and occupy northern Korea. In total, 1,577,725 men in 89 divisions with the support of 3,704 tanks, 1,852 self-propelled guns, 27,086 artillery pieces, and 3,721 aircraft were utilized in the invasion.

https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=167

But why did the USSR feel it necessary to enter into the War in the Pacific?

The Second World War was an unparalleled calamity for the Soviet Union. As many as 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died as a result of the conflict that started with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and ended with the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

Consumed by this existential struggle along its western border, the Soviet Union was a comparatively minor factor in the Pacific War until the very end. Yet Moscow’s timely intervention in the war against Japan allowed it to expand its influence along the Pacific Rim.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/revealed-why-the-soviet-unions-entry-the-pacific-war-matters-13628

09 August 1945 was a Day of Destiny for the world.

If you, my reader, has an opinion on this historical event please feel free to join in the conversation.

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What Year Is It?

Good damn question!

I remember when I was a kid in elementary school (yes I am an old fart) when we had the “duck and cover drills”….these were drills we had where we would get under our desks and cover our heads to practice for the impending nuke attack by the Russians.

Not our finest time and I will bet you are wonder just why that came to my busy mind……

First, our president in his tiny brain has taken the US out of the 80s nuke treaty we had with the Soviets……(this post of mine has some info about the INF Treaty)……https://lobotero.com/2018/10/30/the-inf-in-the-rear-view-mirror/

It is 2019 not 1959…..but yet Trump’s bromance, Putin, since the end of the treaty has thump his chest at the US……..

 

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the United States wanted one and threatened to place hypersonic nuclear missiles on ships or submarines near U.S. territorial waters.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin-idUSKCN1QA1A3

That was a scary threat for I was around for the first one and it worried us all daily until it was over.

Remember there was a time when all our major cities we targets for Soviet nukes and likewise for all the Major cities of the USSR.

And you thought those scary days were over, right?

Think again!

Vladimir Putin is seemingly following DC’s lead of late, first by announcing that Russia will, like the US, pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and now by threatening another mirroring. The Russian leader gave his annual speech, akin to the State of the Union, to the nation Wednesday, and he dropped a warning to the US: If you deploy missiles anywhere in Europe, we’ll not only target those countries, but also America. “Russia will be forced to create and deploy types of weapons which can be used not only in respect of those territories from which the direct threat to us originates, but also in respect of those territories where the centers of decision-making are located,” he said, per Reuters. “We know how to do this and we will implement these plans immediately, as soon as the corresponding threats to us become a reality.”


Putin stressed that Russia would only deploy if the US did first, but that the US should watch its step. “It’s their right to think how they want,” he added. “But can they count? I’m sure they can. Let them count the speed and the range of the weapons systems we are developing.” To underscore his warning, Putin took the opportunity to throw in that testing for two new missiles has been completed, per the Washington Post. Putin ended his speech by noting he hoped to keep the arms conversations going with the US, but that Russia “would not keep knocking on a locked door,” per CNBC. The US and Russia have a six-month period in which they can try to hash out the terms of the INF Treaty before making a final pullout. (Putin has been bragging about Russia’s new hypersonic weapon.)

As an old radio show use to tell us….”Let’s return to yesteryear”……

Afghanistan: USSR’s Vietnam

More international stuff for my readers……

Afghanistan makes the news and not because of it being our longest war…..but rather the babbling of an ignorant president that wants to sound intelligent…..and he fails….

– President Donald Trump seemed to misstate the former Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan on Wednesday with a convoluted account that sparked ridicule on Twitter.

“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/01/02/president-trump-former-soviet-union-right-invade-afghanistan/2466897002/

The last day of the year and NO has mentioned that December of 1979 was the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union….I realize that most people are fixated on their treasures from the Christmas thing and the wait for the big party that ends another year….most people’s minds are numb right now….a good time for me to try and jump start the mental process.

39 years ago the troops of the USSR entered the country of Afghanistan in support of a new leader of the socialist persuasion….

Afghanistan was the ground for one of the last Cold War battles between the United States and the Soviet Union, after the Red Army rolled into the country on December 24, 1979.

Observers give a number of reasons for the Soviet invasion. Until 1973 Afghanistan was a monarchy led by King Mohammad Zahir Shah before he was overthrown by his cousin Mohammad Daoud, whose party consisted of pro-Communist elements.

Daoud was overthrown by the Afghan communists. Internal struggles among the communists led to another coup in which Hafizullah Amin took the reins of power. According to experts, the Soviets perceived Amin as a potential Tito – he was in touch with both China and the United States and the Soviets saw Afghanistan slipping out of its orbit.

https://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/04/2008410113842420760.html

This invasion is a great course for anyone going into diplomatic studies…….

It was to last nearly a decade and would plant the seeds for the rise of the Taliban and Islamic terrorism and the subsequent invasion by the U.S. more than 20 years later.  On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. It was the only time the Soviet Union invaded a country outside the Eastern Bloc.(It also nearly fit the 12-year pattern of major Soviet invasions — Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968.)

https://adst.org/2014/12/the-soviet-invasion-of-afghanistan-december-1979/

But now that Trump has opened mouth and inserted that small foot….maybe we should look at the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR……

There are plenty of reasons to seriously examine Russia’s role in Afghanistan, but too many articles fail to ask questions fundamental to making sense of Moscow’s aims. By refusing to closely scrutinize the facts on the ground, the role of China, and the logic of U.S. policy, the authors of many pieces can claim expertise but never be held accountable for their analysis. Russia is certainly an adversarial power for Washington, but Afghanistan deserves more than talking points from an aerial view.

https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/making-sense-of-russias-involvement-in-afghanistan/

Russia had their hands full with the opposition to their invasion…..and what made anyone in DC think that the Afghans would be open to another invasion and occupation?

Good question, huh?

The sad part with all the information available there will be those mental deficient that support Trump and will buy his version of the affair.

If Trump graduated from Wharton then I am a Mexican gardener named Jesus…..

How sad is that?

**************

Side note:  A pet peeve……the people of Afghanistan are Afghans not Afghanis…that is the currency of the country.

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They Did Not Survive The Cold War

The death of the president that resided over the end of the Cold War got me to thinking about a lot of things especially in the fields of foreign policy and international relations…..

There comes a time when even something as the Cold War becomes history…..so for those youngsters that may be visiting IST let me tell you about the Cold War…..the Cold War was a state of political hostilities between the US and the USSR…..

A few attempts to explain the Cold War to my readers…..it is simple and quicker than trying to write a simple explanation……

Now that you have the background on the Cold War I can move on to where this post is going……

Ever heard of Aceh….or Biafra……or maybe Tibet……those are a few of the countries that did not survive the Cold War and they are NOT alone……

The Cold War spelled the end of numerous countries from 1947-91. Grenada, whose story was featured at the Historiat earlier this week , survived. Poland, Egypt, and Thailand survived, too. The country of South Vietnam, on the other hand, did not survive. On Oct. 26, 1955, South Vietnam declared its independence from Vietnam proper, kicking off a decades-long war that dragged in both Cold War superpowers and the longtime regional kingmaker in southeast Asia, China.

We all know that things ended badly for the rebels. Here are 10 more countries that didn’t survive, either:

https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2018/10/25/10_countries_that_didnt_survive_the_cold_war_372.html

I shall keep posting on the history around the Cold War whenever I can find something unusual for my readers……

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