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Notes on video lecture:
How WWIII was Avoided in the Korean War
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
south, dictators, accepts, forces, 1950, Japan, Taiwan, WWIII, overrun, Ridgway, large, emergency, advocate, global, Nations, line, North, Turks, thousands, stopped, black, Germany, Christmas, intensified, lightly, Republic, assurances, China, China, big, skies, sea, 1950, scattered
the Korean War                        in a way that it felt as though WWIII was about to begin
WWII had two theaters which eventually combined and became a              war
people in          still had this in mind
June 1950, Korean War starts
September 1950: Americans get enough              so that they can turn the tide
America controls the air and the       
launches a high-risk invasion behind            Korean lines, collapses resistance
British, French, and            are sending troop contingents
American forces begin to                North Korea
there are arguments in hindsight that the U.S. should have                after that invasion and not keep going north
there was no chance that they would have chosen that, given the precedent in WWII, that fact that you had to crush and utterly defeat                    to win a war and not just push them back
the goal was the control the peninsula and organized along the lines provided by the United               
North Korean allies' response
Soviet Union argues that            needs to go to war against the United States and the United Nations
a            fraction of the Chinese leadership does not want the larger war
they want to concentrate on building the new People's                 
the chief                  for the war is Mao Zedong himself
Mao is asking Stalin for                      in equipment and supplies, and air cover
one can very quickly see how this could turn into           
Stalin's arguments:
USA is not ready for a        war
           is not yet capable of giving much help to the Americans
USA will be compelled to yield to           
USA will have to also give up on             
of course, this could all set off a chain reaction which involves China more deeply, and then the Soviet Union
but if a war is inevitable, let it be waged now and not after Japan and                have regained their military strength
Mao                this reasoning and brings China into the fight
October/November         
Chinese have hundreds of thousands of soldiers for a mass offensive
but the USA has complete control of the            and the seas, and have much better fire power
the Chinese offensive can work if the US forces are                    over a mountainous countryside
not in prepared positions
Douglas MacArthur continues to scatter his forces across the map of North Korea
the Chinese,                armed, cut these forces off, at night, in the winter, in the mountains
what MacArthur could have done is held a solid          across the peninsula
MacArthur was over-confident wanting to have troops home by                   
U.S. flees in retreat fighting China
by January 1951 Mao and Chinese push           
U.S. declares national                    and triples the defense budget over night just at it did at the outbreak of WWII
Douglas MacArthur is replaced by Matthew               
are able to hold the line Korea with United Nation troops
the Chinese lose hundreds of                    of soldiers
American forces are now integrated,            and white
America decided not to widen the war into World War III
Douglas MacArthur, however, had argued to widen war but Truman finally removed him in April 1951
in spite of this, MacArthur comes home to ticker tape parades

People:

######################### (1898-1974)
[]
Chinese Communist military leader who supported Mao's suggestions to involve China directly in the Korean War
  • Defense Minister from 1954 to 1959
######################### (1895-1993)
U.S. Army general credited for turning the Korean War around in favor of the UN side
  • in 1986 recognized by the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • when MacArthur was relieved by Truman in April 1951, Ridgway assumed command of all United Nations forces in Korea
1914: Schizophrenic Germany
1914: The Balkan Whirlpool
1914: From Balkan Crisis to War
1914-1916: All War Plans Fail Horribly
The 1916 Missed Opportunity for Peace
WWI Pushes Warring Countries Toward Total States
Why the Allies Won World War One
Post-WWI: Filling the Void of Collapsed Empires
Post-WWI Communism vs. Anti-Communism
Post World War I: The Age of Uncertainty
1910s/1920s: Modern Women
The World of 1930
The 1930s World Crisis
1930s: The Decade of Contingency
America's Entry into World War II
WWII: Strategies for Total War
1945: Hour Zero
Post WWII: Imagining New Countries
Conflicts in Postwar Nation Building
The Two Europes That Emerged After WWII
1947 China: Undesirable Communists vs. Flawed Nationalists
Post WWII: The Age of America
Reasons for the Korean War
How WWIII was Avoided in the Korean War
1950-1952: The Cold War Comes to Main Street
1950-1954: The H-Bomb and the Nuclear Revolution
1950s: Loosening Empires and Building Confederations
The Emergence of the Third World
1958-1962: The World at the Brink
Third World Proxy Wars of the 1950s and 1960s
Managerial States and the Transnational Disruption of 1968
1970s Obstacles to Reducing Cold War Tensions
1970s Democratic Socialism Becomes a Non-Choice
1980s Political Polarization
1980s: Global Capitalism Transformed