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  • We finished off the last video entering

  • into the Great Depression.

  • It wasn't just a depression for the US.

  • It was a depression for the world.

  • But I want to back up a little bit,

  • because I forgot to mention a very important fact that's

  • hugely important to the rest of US history

  • into the 20th century.

  • And that's what happened in 1917, actually during World War

  • I. And that's the Bolshevik Revolution.

  • The Russian empire was overthrown by the Bolsheviks.

  • And it became the Soviet Union, which you probably know

  • was a communist state, and it became the United States

  • archenemy over the rest of-- well,

  • not over the rest of-- but near the, I guess,

  • the second half of the 20th century.

  • So with that out of the way, I just

  • want to make sure you know that Russia is now the Soviet Union.

  • Let's fast forward back through the Great Depression,

  • and probably the one point when we're

  • doing this very high-level overview that's of interest.

  • And as you can see, even though the focus of this series

  • of videos is on US interest, what's

  • happening in the rest of the world

  • is starting to become much more important, because the US is

  • starting to become this really serious global actor.

  • And so in 1933-- so this is right in the middle

  • of this global depression, and Germany was especially

  • hit hard because of all the damage done by World War

  • I and the war reparations and all the rest.

  • You have Hitler coming to power as chancellor of Germany.

  • And it's interesting to note that it was actually--

  • he came to power in a democratic process.

  • Chancellor of Germany is analogous to prime minister

  • of other countries, and so essentially he

  • was ruling a coalition.

  • The Nazis, his party, did not have the majority.

  • But they were able to control this coalition.

  • Although it was a very weak one.

  • But what they were good at is intimidating and rigging

  • elections and all the rest.

  • And so over the course of the rest of the '30s,

  • essentially the Nazis consolidated power

  • until we get to 1939.

  • And the rest of the world would kind of watch Hitler.

  • He was consolidating power.

  • He came in democratically, but he was essentially

  • consolidating power under himself,

  • turning it into a dictatorship.

  • He was militarizing Germany.

  • People started to get concerned, but they all

  • had the doctrine of appeasement.

  • Hey, you know, let's just not make him too angry

  • and maybe he won't start anything too bad.

  • But in 1939, Germany invades Poland.

  • And this is kind of viewed as the one event

  • that kind of-- the straw that breaks the camel's

  • back, so to speak.

  • And so it begins World War II.

  • So this is the beginning of World War II.

  • And initially it's between-- I guess

  • if you think about the great powers that initially get

  • involved, it is the British Empire and the Soviet Union.

  • France is involved.

  • It quickly gets overrun by the Nazis.

  • And what happens is that the US-- it

  • wasn't like the situation with World War I

  • where the US was trying to stay neutral.

  • The US had recognized, especially FDR, Franklin Delano

  • Roosevelt, he had recognized that Hitler was an aggressor,

  • that he was, from FDR's point of view, definitely in the wrong

  • here.

  • So even from the beginning of World War II,

  • the US did help support the Allies.

  • So it would send arms and any other type of assistance.

  • When Japan and Italy joined on the side of Germany,

  • the US embargoed oil to Japan.

  • The US was an exporter of oil to Japan.

  • And you could imagine Japan did not

  • produce a lot of its own oil, and oil is super important

  • when you're trying to run a war machine.

  • So that didn't make Japan too happy.

  • So you fast forward to 1941, and you have Japan bombing Pearl

  • Harbor.

  • So until this point, US kind of played a non-direct role.

  • It definitely supported the Allies.

  • It did what it could economically

  • and by providing military aid, but it did not actively

  • participate in the fighting.

  • But then December 7, 1941, the Japanese

  • bombed the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.

  • And that's a whole interesting debate

  • because, or discussion, it was lucky for the US

  • that a lot of the Pacific fleet was not there.

  • But it was obviously this thing that convinced the US public

  • that World War II was worth joining.

  • So in 1941, because of Pearl Harbor, the US enters the war.

  • And it enters the war in both arenas,

  • both in Europe and in the Pacific.

  • And then you fast forward.

  • It goes against the Italians in North Africa.

  • And then you fast forward to 1944, it actually

  • enters into the fight in mainland Europe.

  • This is the invasion of Normandy.

  • This is D-Day.

  • June 6, 1944.

  • If you have ever seen "Saving Private Ryan,"

  • it starts with this.

  • I've never stormed a beach, but I

  • could imagine that's probably the most realistic reenactment

  • of what it was like to storm the beach at Normandy.

  • But you fast forward to 1945.

  • And eventually, especially between the Soviet and the US,

  • or I should say all the Allied forces,

  • they're able to, I guess, win the European front of World War

  • II.

  • And then you fast forward to the end of that year.

  • Japan was still kind of fighting pretty ferociously.

  • And so the US-- and this is once again--

  • I could make many videos of this.

  • We can debate the ethical implications of this.

  • But the US develops the atomic bomb,

  • ignites one over Hiroshima and then a few days later one

  • over Nagasaki.

  • And that essentially ends World War II.

  • And so the outcome of World War II

  • is you have two remaining superpowers.

  • You have the Soviet Union, and you have the United States.

  • And what happens after that is that you have the Cold War.

  • These two huge powers, the Soviet Union

  • is this communist country.

  • It's obviously trying to create this communist sphere

  • of influence.

  • A lot of Eastern Europe was falling under Soviet sway.

  • The United States, not a communist country,

  • a very capitalist country, you can imagine.

  • And this is something that gets confused a lot.

  • The Soviet Union was communist, and it was totalitarian.

  • Communism and Democracy aren't necessarily things

  • that go against each other.

  • But the Soviet Union had neither a capitalist system,

  • nor democracy.

  • It was both communist and totalitarian.

  • And when I say communist, I'm talking

  • about no private wealth.

  • The state really owned all resources.

  • The United States, on the other hand, was hugely capitalist.

  • And you could imagine many people in the United States

  • did not want any of this communism business

  • to come to us.

  • So you have this major battle that never really erupts

  • into direct conflict between the Soviet Union and the United

  • States.

  • It's always done through proxies,

  • through people who the United States or the Soviet Union

  • is acting on the behalf-- or who are acting on behalf

  • of the United States or Soviet Union.

  • But you have the Cold War beginning.

  • And it's called the Cold War because it wasn't a hot war.

  • The United States and the Soviet Union

  • never really fired bullets at each other.

  • Instead, they supported other parties

  • that would fire bullets at the Soviet Union.

  • Or the Soviet Union would support other parties

  • that would fire bullets at the United States.

  • And for the United States, it was all

  • about stopping communism.

  • It was all about preventing this domino theory

  • that if one country in a region would fall to communism,

  • that other countries would.

  • So the United States became a bit paranoid,

  • or maybe it was justified.

  • Either way, it was very concerned

  • about the spread of communism.

  • And the first time that this really gets tested-- and 1950

  • is an interesting year, because this is the first time--

  • obviously, the US had nuclear weapons as of 1945.

  • But in 1950, the Soviet Union tested

  • its first nuclear weapon.

  • So now the Cold War is starting to get very serious.

  • Both of these adversaries can now

  • nuke each other if they wanted to.

  • And also in 1950, you have Korea.

  • And Korea, before World War II-- so that's

  • a very small depiction of Korea--

  • it was a Japanese colony.

  • But obviously, Japan had now lost.

  • And so after World War II, it was

  • split between an area, North Korea, which

  • was influenced by the Russians, and South Korea, which

  • was influenced by the United States.

  • And it was split along the 38th parallel,

  • and I know this is a super small diagram.

  • We'll go into more detail when we

  • do detailed videos about the Korean War.

  • But in 1950, you have the North Koreans invaded the South.

  • So it started the Korean War.

  • The US sent troops.

  • The North Koreans had China on their side, the Chinese army.

  • The Soviets were also supplying them.

  • But at the end of the day in 1953,

  • you fast forward, it ends up being

  • a little bit of a stalemate, because the end result was is

  • that the original 38th parallel border gets,

  • I guess, reinstated.

  • But that was the first real conflict of the Cold War.

  • And notice there were never US or Russian--

  • or I shouldn't say Russian-- US or Soviet troops

  • directly firing at each other.

  • The US were at war with the North

  • Korean and the Chinese troops, but they

  • were kind of proxies for the Soviet Union.

  • And at the same time, as you can imagine,

  • because you have these two adversaries, these two

  • technically sophisticated adversaries--

  • they both had nuclear weapons-- it

  • became very interesting on who can kind of dominate space.

  • So you have this kind of space race developing in 1957.

  • The Soviets are able to launch the first artificial satellite

  • around the earth.

  • This is Sputnik One over here.

  • Some people think the first Sputnik

  • is the one that had the dog in it.

  • No, that came a few months later.

  • That was Sputnik Two, actually.

  • Had the picture of the dog here, but the dog eventually dies.

  • But it was alive for a little bit in orbit.

  • So that gets everyone freaked out.

  • The US responds.

  • Then in 1961 you have Yuri Gagarin.

  • He's the first person in space, first human being in space.

  • He returns safely.

  • We eventually get up there-- or the United States eventually

  • gets up there as well.

  • And you fast forward all the way to 1969, the US

  • is the first to be on the moon.

  • So you have this space race.

  • The two countries are really trying to one up each other.

  • And at the same time that that's happening,

  • you have-- and I bring this up just because so much

  • happened during his presidency.

  • In 1960, you have John F. Kennedy

  • being elected kind of in the heart of the Cold War.

  • And the other interesting thing is

  • he was the first Catholic president,

  • which people questioned.

  • That by itself was interesting.

  • But what was really interesting in his short presidency-- and I

  • think you might know that only had really--

  • he actually became president in '61.

  • This is an error.

  • He was elected in '60, but he became president in '61.

  • He had a very short presidency.

  • He was assassinated in '63, but a lot

  • happened in that short presidency.

  • In 1957, right before he became president, you had-- oh, sorry.

  • Not 1957.

  • Let me get my years right.

  • 1959 you had the Cuban Revolution.

  • Cuba became communist.

  • Fidel Castro takes over.

  • It becomes communist.

  • So you could imagine, the Americans

  • didn't like a communist state so close to our own borders.

  • So in 1961 we support some ex-Cubans,

  • or some Cuban exiles, to try to invade Cuba.

  • And that also can be a whole topic for another video.

  • There's debates between the CIA and the Kennedy administration

  • for who was to blame for it being such a failure,

  • but it was a failure.

  • So it was a huge embarrassment to the United States.

  • And from the revolutionaries' point

  • of view, the communist revolutionaries' point of view,

  • they kind of viewed this as solidifying their hold of Cuba.

  • It showed that they could fend off

  • a counter-revolutionary assault.

  • And then you have in 1962.

  • We have these spy planes.

  • And we see that the Soviets are starting

  • to put these ballistic missiles in Cuba, which really freaks

  • the United States out, because these ballistic missiles could

  • reach any part of the United States.

  • We actually had similar ones in parts of Europe and Turkey,

  • but we don't like these things here.

  • So we essentially used our Navy to, I would say,

  • blockade any more arms shipments to the Soviet Union.

  • So Kennedy really has this kind of stand-off with the Soviet

  • Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

  • And most people believe that this

  • was the closest that the United States and the Soviet Union

  • ever got to actually having a war,

  • and which would have probably turned into a nuclear war.

  • But the stand-off eventually got resolved.

  • The Soviet Union agreed to remove their missiles.

  • Well, one, not send anymore missiles and dismantle the ones

  • that they had already set up.

  • And this wasn't publicly stated at the time,

  • but the United States also agreed

  • to do the same thing for our missiles

  • that were pointed at the Soviet Union,

  • to remove those from Turkey.

  • So the world, at least at that point in time,

  • had avoided a mutually assured destruction.

  • The whole time that this is happening,

  • remember, the United States is paranoid.

  • And maybe justifiably so.

  • Paranoia usually means worried when there's not a cause.

  • But maybe justifiably worried about the spread of communism.

  • You have a situation where, in Vietnam, you

  • have a Vietnam, which is right about-- let

  • me make sure I circle the right country-- you have

  • in Vietnam the communists come to power in North Vietnam.

  • This was formally a French colony.

  • The US, right from the get-go in 1950,

  • start sending advisers to aid the anti-communists

  • in South Vietnam.

  • In Kennedy's administration, the amount of advisors-- and I

  • should probably put that in quotes,

  • because these advisers started becoming much more involved--

  • really grew.

  • And until 1965, the United States

  • started sending it acts actual official combat

  • troops to fight in Vietnam.

  • And you fast forward that all the way to 1975.

  • And the reason why this is significant,

  • other than this being one of the more recent major wars

  • the United States has been in, it's

  • the first war that the United States kind of unambiguously

  • lost.

  • In 1975, the last presence of the United States left.

  • And essentially Saigon, which was

  • the capital of South Vietnam, fell to the communists.

  • So I'll leave you there, and we're now essentially

  • in modern history.

  • At least from my point of view, because I

  • was born not too long after that.

  • Anyway, hopefully you found that interesting.

  • Let me, oh, I couldn't find the stop button.

  • There you go.

We finished off the last video entering

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美國曆史概述3--二戰至越南 (US History Overview 3 - WWII to Vietnam)

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    Bravo001 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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