February: Site update and 75th Anniversary of Yalta
Tuesday 25 February 2020
Anniversaries
This month sees the 75th annivesary of the Yalta Conference and so provides an opportunity to have a fresh look at this event which, as historian Diana Preston - author of a new book on Yalta published this month - writes, has become the 'byword for failure and broken promises'.
This BBC article gives a good overview of the context, events and impact of the conference:
In 2005, President George W. Bush called Yalta ‘one of the greatest wrongs of history … Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable.’
But could the Yalta conference have been handled differently given the international context?
This could be an interesting question to ask students when looking at the ultimate failure of Yalta with regard to Poland and the fate of the countries of Eastern Europe as it involves an analysis of the situation in Europe at the time and the relationship between the three men. Indeed the articles below all consider the restraints on the decision making that led to the Yalta agreements.
Eight Days at Yalta How Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin shaped the post-war world (Pan Macmillan)
The outcome of the Yalta Conference affected events throughout the twentieth century, and shaped modern history. Here Diana Preston asks, could the consequences have been any different?
The Myth of Yalta | National Review (National Review)
It was in exchange for Stalin's pledge to join the war against Japan that Roosevelt made concessions on Eastern Europe.
Yalta, 75 Years Later: What Should Be Remembered? (The Globe Post)
Global leadership is messy and requires balancing competing objectives and making imperfect decisions under serious constraints. That is as true today as it was 75 years ago at Yalta.
For more discussion on Yalta, go to the Cold War topic for Paper Two:
Site update
In the last month we have completed Paper 3, Asia region Topic 7.
We have also started a new example under Paper 2, Topic 6, Early Modern Wars:
For a TOK issue, we have added the following page:
Recent articles
The following article from History Today follows on from our previous TOK posts on the impact of 'fake news' on the writing of history:
International Women's day
If you are planning any displays or assemblies for International Women's Day, 8th March, you may want to look back to our blog for March 2019. This blog mentions several key women in history who are often overlooked; one of these is NASA mathematician, Katherine Johnson who died this month: