Film Lesson: "The Right Stuff"

In the movie "The Right Stuff", the film depicts the competition between the US and the USSR. The movie is based on the Cold War, which was going on between the two superpowers competing over supremacy. "The Right Stuff" is about the US and the USSR fighting in the space race, a race to see who could send the first astronauts to space. In the movie it showed Russia beating the US into space on many occasions, like launching rockets into space. Another example of Russia winning against the US is the fact that they sent the first man into outer space while the US sent chimpanzees. I think the scene that will help me remember this event in the Cold War is when the US astronauts were being questioned over the choice to send the chimps instead of them.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

During the Cold War two alliances were formed, NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the Warsaw Pact. NATO is the alliance formed by the US and Eastern Europe nations to prevent the spread of communism, it was officially established on April 4,1949. Eastern Europe was economically and politically weak at the end of WW II, the agreement helped with economic aide under the Marshall Plan. The Soviet Union responded by creating the Warsaw Pact on May 14,1955 in Warsaw,Poland. The Warsaw Pact mainly consisted of the Soviet Union which dominated the alliance and its satellite countries. The Soviet Union keeping military personnel in other countries of the alliance and kept them running socialist governments. As the US's relationship with the Soviet Union worsened NATO's importance grew, with Western leaders felt threatened. The Soviet Union spread communism throughout Eastern Europe and started to reach the military capability of the Western Powers. An ever-worsening crisis began in the 1980's but was stopped by the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Treaty in 1987 which began the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact. In March of 1991 all of the joint military functions ceased and in July of 1991 the leaders of the six countries still in the Pact decided to dissolve.

Film Lesson: Schindler's List

The film Schindler's List is a 1993 film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust. The film showed many scenes depicting the things that occured in the concentration camps in Krakow. In my opinion one of the most powerful scenes in the film is the part where the Jews were being taken to Auschwitz and it was raining ashes. I think that this scene was the most powerful because it showed the amount of killings being done at Auschwitz.