Dwight David Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States and a member of the Republican Party. He was a hero of the Second World War and a very important figure in the liberation of Europe. He was also regarded as a great diplomat and, when he was elected, he became the first Republican president in 20 years. In...
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Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States and brought the Democratic Party back into power after over 20 years in the wilderness. He inherited a dire economic situation from his Republican predecessor and responded by implementing the New Deal, a wide-ranging series of measures designed to stimulate economic recovery and create jobs. He also took the crucial decision to bring the...
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Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the USSR and had a major impact on the path that Russia took at the end of the 20th century. He was a somewhat controversial figure, known in the West as the man who ended the Cold War while being one of the least popular 20th century leaders in Russia. This is understandable, as Gorbachev...
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On 6 August 1945, the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The second bomb followed days later, hitting Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. The attacks caused the complete destruction of two major Japanese cities, brought about the immediate surrender of Japan and the end of the Second World War, and led to the beginning of the...
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John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States. Although he actively fought against Communism and established the Peace Corps, Kennedy is probably known most of all for his unexpected assassination in 1963, during his visit to Texas, when he was shot in the head by Lee Harvey Oswald. His murder sent shockwaves around the world. In just 50 minutes, you will...
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On 21 July 1969, the American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the commander of the Apollo 11 spaceship, became the first person in history to set foot on the Moon. This crucial event marked the peak of the Space Race, which pitted the Cold War rivals the USA and the USSR against one another as they sent artificial satellites, probes and eventually humans...
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Richard Nixon was the 37th President of the United States and one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century. Known in particular for the Watergate scandal, the affair that ended his political career, Nixon was a fierce anti-communist and was responsible for the end of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. In just 50 minutes, you will find out about...
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It is impossible to understand modern European history without first understanding the Cold War. Indeed, the tensions between the USA and the USSR, the two great powers to emerge from the Second World War, dominated the second half of the 20th century, resulted in a series of brutal proxy wars and brought the planet to the brink of nuclear war. The clash...
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The fall of the Berlin Wall put an end to almost 30 years of physical and ideological separation between the two halves of the German capital. Constructed at the height of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall symbolized the hostility between the capitalist powers in the West and the Communist powers in the East. Its fall saw people flood across...
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The Korean War was an internal war which led to a major confrontation between the Western Bloc and the Communist Bloc. The conflict lasted for three years and ended with no real winner, so the Korean Peninsula was divided into two states. In just 50 minutes, you will gain an understanding of why the war broke out and find out...
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The Vietnam War lasted for 20 years, from 1955 to 1975, and had deadly consequences for both the soldiers fighting in it and Vietnamese civilians. Following the partition of French Indochina by the Geneva Accords in 1954, tensions mounted between the two ideologically opposed halves of the country, resulting in a long conflict between the US-backed South Vietnam on the one hand,...
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Josip Broz Tito was the first President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, holding the role from 1953 to his death in 1980. After distinguishing himself in the resistance during the Second World War, he played a crucial role in shaping the new federal state and went on to defy Stalin, calling instead for a “third way” between the Eastern...
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