Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

skies, intensified, line, south, assurances, lightly, Turks, stopped, advocate, North, Taiwan, China, large, forces, Nations, global, black, Ridgway, thousands, dictators, accepts, 1950, emergency, 1950, China, overrun, scattered, Japan, sea, WWIII, Republic, big, Germany, Christmas

•

the Korean War                       intensified in a way that it felt as though WWIII was about to begin

•

WWII had two theaters which eventually combined and became a             global war

•

people in         1950 still had this in mind

•

June 1950, Korean War starts

•

September 1950: Americans get enough             forces so that they can turn the tide

•

America controls the air and the       sea

•

launches a high-risk invasion behind           North Korean lines, collapses resistance

•

British, French, and           Turks are sending troop contingents

•

American forces begin to               overrun North Korea

•

there are arguments in hindsight that the U.S. should have               stopped 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                   dictators 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               Nations

•

North Korean allies' response

•

Soviet Union argues that           China needs to go to war against the United States and the United Nations

•

a           large fraction of the Chinese leadership does not want the larger war

•

they want to concentrate on building the new People's                 Republic

•

the chief                 advocate for the war is Mao Zedong himself

•

Mao is asking Stalin for                     assurances in equipment and supplies, and air cover

•

one can very quickly see how this could turn into           WWIII

•

Stalin's arguments:

•

USA is not ready for a       big war

•

          Japan is not yet capable of giving much help to the Americans

•

USA will be compelled to yield to           China

•

USA will have to also give up on             Taiwan

•

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               Germany have regained their military strength

•

Mao               accepts this reasoning and brings China into the fight

•

October/November         1950

•

Chinese have hundreds of thousands of soldiers for a mass offensive

•

but the USA has complete control of the           skies and the seas, and have much better fire power

•

the Chinese offensive can work if the US forces are                   scattered over a mountainous countryside

•

not in prepared positions

•

Douglas MacArthur continues to scatter his forces across the map of North Korea

•

the Chinese,               lightly armed, cut these forces off, at night, in the winter, in the mountains

•

what MacArthur could have done is held a solid         line across the peninsula

•

MacArthur was over-confident wanting to have troops home by                   Christmas

•

U.S. flees in retreat fighting China

•

by January 1951 Mao and Chinese push           south

•

U.S. declares national                   emergency and triples the defense budget over night just at it did at the outbreak of WWII

•

Douglas MacArthur is replaced by Matthew               Ridgway

•

are able to hold the line Korea with United Nation troops

•

the Chinese lose hundreds of                   thousands of soldiers

•

American forces are now integrated,           black 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