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Summary Unseen Prose context A level english lit
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- Unseen prose
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- AQA
Unseen prose for a level english literature context
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Context unseen prose:1945 - Now
WW2
- Sparked by the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, the war dragged on for six bloody years until the
Allies defeated Nazi Germany and Japan in 1945.
- Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy
and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September
1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany.
- Hitler took advantage of a time of crisis, after the morale of the country was low, after losing the
first war and hyper-inflation and poverty.
- Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi
concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final Solution,” now known as the Holocaust.
- Harry Barnsley: sackful of tins and throwing them out one between two men. We then opened the
tin with a bayonet and dug-in with our fingers to the stone-cold food. At the beginning of the war,
no bread was received for 6 weeks, only army biscuits
- 24 hour ration packs were supplied for 12 men at a time containing food and even toilet paper.
Sometime these were opened and found to be full of bricks, ------ they had been looted by the
dockers!
1945 Korea, South and North
- Korea was independent until Japan had conquered it. After Japan's defeat after World War ll,
American and Soviet forces temporary divided Korea along the 38th parallel
- In 1953 both sides agreed to stop fighting but Korea still remained divided.
1948 Israel
- The Jews proclaimed the State of Israel in 1948 after Britain withdrew from Palestine. Arab states
were defeated in many wars they launched against Israel, which developed quickly
- Israel attracted many Jews, including those expelled from Middle Eastern lands. Refugee
problems caused a war which caused many of the Palestinian Arabs and Jews from Arab to flee
from their homes.
1948 Apartheid
- Apartheid was a system of racial segregation and discrimination In South Africa.
- Under apartheid the minority of whites and nonwhite majority were separated. Nonwhites also
faced political and economic discrimination.
1952 - European union
- West Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Italy had set up the European
Coal and Steel Community, which lead to free trade in coal and steel due to the elimination of
tariffs or fees.
- allowed workers and capital to move across national borders freely.
1955 Vietnam War
- The Vietnam War started due to the division of Vietnam. North communist Vietnam was ruled by
Ho a nationalist, while South noncommunist Vietnam was ruled by Ngo Dinh Diem supported by
the U.S.
- On the other hand More American troops were sent as well as help to the Soviet Union and
China, but no help for the Vietnamese. Later the U.S. thought of the war as a swamp just sinking
, them in deeper, so they decided to withdraw. Two years later North Vietnam had conquered
South Vietnam.
- US Veteran: Caesar Smith: you're fighting in 102, 103 degree weather. It's always hot. you're
already nervous, upset, you're shaking like you've got Parkinson's because you're getting ready
to get off a plane and then the enemy might be right in that tree line and is going to shoot at you
and you don't know. you said it was organized chaos, I think at times it was just chaos.
- Black soldiers were nothing new in the American military, but Vietnam was the first major conflict
in which they were fully integrated,
- integration on paper did not translate into full equality and substantive integration.
- He observed black and white soldiers in the 101st Airborne sharing supplies, telling stories and
jokes, and generally empathizing with one another, whatever their race.
- McGee to conclude, “Nowhere in America have I seen Negroes and whites as free, open and
uninhibited with their associations. I saw no eyes clouded with resentment.”
- Throughout the war, black soldiers charged that they were disproportionately assigned menial
duties, denied promotion to the rank they deserved and unfairly targeted for punishment.
- Eventually, the racial tension and violence that had convulsed the home front during the summer
of 1967 erupted in Vietnam. In large part this was because of the inability or refusal of military
leaders to address adequately complaints of racial discrimination,
- between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were gunned down by members of the U.S.
Army in what became known as the My Lai Massacre.
- "The idea was that you would warn people in a given area — a large swath of the countryside —
that the area would be opened up to unrestricted fire, and ... the idea was that [the civilians]
would leave this area and that this would break the connection between the people and the
guerrillas. You know, the U.S. tried to accomplish this by announcements from the loudspeakers
on planes or helicopters or by dropping leaflets on a generally illiterate population.
1961 Berlin Wall
- Due to the Cold War, Berlin was divided into democratic West Berlin and communist East Berlin.
- West Germany was prospering which caused the low-paid East Germans to flee to the West.
- To stop this from happening East Germany built a massive concrete barrier with barbed
- This forcibly kept workers from fleeing.
- Barb Dignin: The night the Wall went up (the beginning of the process, anyway), my family was in
our home. We began to hear people outside yelling, crying, louder and louder. We went into the
street to witness tragic panic and fear. Neighbours were telling each other (and us) that they had
relatives in East Berlin – they had tried to contact them, but couldn’t – that no one knew what was
happening. Rumours spread. Some thought their relatives had been killed, or would soon be
killed. I had never witnessed anything like this. Everyone cried.
- Tina Bain: The whole atmosphere was one of fear and panic, people stocking up on food and
worrying about loved ones on the other side. My parents back in the UK worried that I wouldn’t be
able to get out. I had never seen tanks in the streets before and I was very frightened.
- East German guards gun down a young man trying to escape across the Berlin Wall into West
Berlin and leave him to bleed to death. It was one of the ugliest incidents to take place at one of
the ugliest symbols of the Cold War.
1947 The Cold war
- During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the
Axis powers.
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