3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 3.1. Historical Background 3.1.1. The U.S Civil War "War is a hellish way to settle a disagreement" The American Civil War (1861 - 1865) was one of the most violent times in the History of the United States. Many books have been written on all aspects of the Civil War...

The Vietnam War, the nation's longest, cost fifty-eight thousand American lives. Only the Civil War and the two world wars were deadlier for Americans. During the decade of direct U.S. military participation in Vietnam beginning in 1964, the U.S Treasury spent over $140 billion on the war, enough...

The War in Vietnam direct U.S. military participation in The Vietnam War, the nation's longest, cost fifty-eight thousand American lives. Only the Civil War and the two world wars were deadlier for Americans. During the decade of Vietnam beginning in 1964, the U.S Treasury spent ov...

Who Was to Blame for the Cold War? The blame for the Cold War cannot be placed on one person -- it developed as a series of chain reactions as a struggle for supremacy. It can be argued that the Cold War was inevitable, and therefore no one's fault, due to the differences in the capitalist and comm...

A war crime is any of various crimes, such as genocide or the mistreatment of prisoners of war, committed during a war and considered in violation of the conventions of warfare. War crimes are constantly being committed during war and something has to be done. There have been too many instances wh...

Q: How far do you agree that the Cold War broke out because Soviet and Western leaders misinterpreted each other's words and actions? The Cold War was a period of tension and hostility between the West and Soviet Union [SU], the origins of which dates back to 1917. However the C...

WORLD CONFLICT IN THE 20TH CENTURY 1 The 20th century was the bloodiest 100 years in human history. Based on numbers killed, in warfare, the 20th century exceeds all other centuries combined. The three major conflicts between 1901 and 200 were World War I, World War II, an...

After WW2, the most powerful countries in the world were the US and the Soviet Union, who soon became bitter rivals. The Soviet Union began invading Europe and destroyed their democratic governments, replacing them with communist governments. In the same year, 1949, China also became a communist nat...

The quote, "Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters . . . Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to go...

While the United States was fighting the Cold War to preserve its freedoms, the fears and anti-Communism the Cold War helped cause at home undermined some of those freedoms. One of the most notorious examples of this is Senator Joseph McCarthy. In his search for Communists in the U.S. government...

Air Power and the Gulf War An acknowledged aerospace historian, Mr. Richard P. Hallion is an associate for the Smithsonian Institution employed in the research division. A former Charles A. Lindbergh Professor of Aerospace History, Mr. Hallion has written or edited thirteen other books, inc...

The Cold War began as an ideological struggle between the two superpowers that emerged in the aftermath of World War Two (WWII). The destruction of the former Western European balance of power post-WWII allowed for new nations to emerge superpowers. The tensions that arose from the restructured bipo...

After the Potsdam Conference, which took place from the 17th of July to the 2nd of August 1945, the Allied countries, mainly the USA, the UK, and the USSR, were moving steadily apart from each other in terms of their interests, leaving Europe torn apart into the eastern and the western blocs. The en...

Vietnam was a country that had been at war for many years. In 1954, the occupying French finally left Vietnam and a Geneva code was drawn up outlining the peace treaty. The United States had troops in Vietnam at the time of the cease-fire and they remained there after the Geneva code. Since the e...

In the United States, decade following World War II should have been an era of prosperity and peace. After all, the Great Depression that had pervaded the 1920s through the 1930s was over. The United States had emerged victorious from the war. The country's position as a military superp...

The leader of the Nationalist forces, General Franco, headed the authoritarian regime that was in power in Spain after the Civil War (May, 1978). Francisco Franco became a general in 1926 and in 1934 became the commander of the Spanish army. Two years later, he led a revolt against the elected g...

Benito Mussolini leader of the Fascist government in Italy stated, "If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (Liberalism implies individualism), we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the state" (Mussolini: 1...

John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States in 1961. At the age of forty-three, he was the youngest man ever elected president. He was also the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the oval office. Rich, handsome, charming, elegant, articulate, and from a well known fa...

"War! Good God ya'll! What is it good for?! Absolutely nothing! Listen to me!" To whomever have heard the lyrics of Edwin Starr's War is likely to have had some opinion formulated about how war is a destructive force in itself. In a world where power is absolute and idolized like an omnipotent force...

The Use of Presidential Power by Johnson and Nixon Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson (1963-1968) and Richard Milhous Nixon (1968-1974) will be remembered for the different ideals, goals, and failures within their administrations. Johnson was immediately appointed President foll...

"The support given by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support a rope gives a hanged man." These were words once uttered from the mouth of the Soviet Union's most ambitious and successful ruler, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. Khrushchev was a man that took over po...

Imagine the next time you step into the voting booth your ballot only lists one candidate to choose from. Or perhaps your ballot lists four candidates, but they are all from the Liberal party. Dictatorships are one party political systems that are ruled by one leader or an elite group of people unde...

The history of United States of America starts relatively late when compared to other countries of West European civilization. However it inherited the background and experience of the "old world" and succeeded in becoming the world's superpower. Today, the United States dominates the...

During the Cold War not much was known about the activities of the Russian state security organization by western intelligence agencies. However after the collapse of the Soviet Union, documents that have been smuggled out by KGB agents (Wilson 1) have allowed agents to see just how much this agency...

Outsiders Looking In In the United States something very odd happened during the period of time from the middle of the 1950's up to the impact of the crisis of the 1960's. For once in the storied history of the United States a majority of Americans accepted the same system of assumptions. ...