The early 1960s were some of the most dramatic years of the Cold War as several key events influenced the turning point with the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. But what really led the world to be on the brink of nuclear destruction.
In class we researched, and formulated our essays about why the world was on the brink. I decided to focus on the formation of NATO and more specifically West Germany’s involvement.
Something I learned in this unit is that every event and decision leading up to a change or turning point in history connect to each other
We watched some great films about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 60s, and social change. From all of these films and further research I made a connection that the want to keep power pushes away serious economic issues and causes more. The Cold War took the attention away from the economic change that needed to happen with the united farm workers and caused more harm to Germany.
The Cold War caused the whole word to live in fear as the threat of nuclear weapons were much to pressing. In the film “Thirteen Days” allows you to feel what the president and others in power such as Kenny O’Donnell might have felt during these intense 13 days. My favourite quote was, “There is no wise old man”, because sometimes when making the tough decisions there is only you, and only you can look at the past to decide what’s best for the future.
We have been learning about the crazy 60s for awhile now but the film “The Sixties: World on the Brink”, as you could have guessed covered the new topic we were focusing on for our essay. From this film we were able to pick one of these topic that we thought was important to research into.
- Marshall plan
- Iron curtain
- Berlin blockade
- NATO
- Wasrsaw pact
- Korean War
- Berlin Wall
- Truman Doctrine
Developing Essays
From creating this essay I learned that there is value in spending time after doing your research to think of these four things.
- Why am I writing?
- How is my topic a small part of a whole?
- What message do I want to send?
- Who is my audience?
We also focused in on credibility. When using websites for information there are some great tips such as checking out the organization on Wikipedia that will save you from heading down the wrong road. Also Google Books and research data bases are helpful for finding primary sources.