+# Stasiland - History
+
+## Cold war
+
+- 1945 - 1991
+- USA (cap) and USSR (com) dominated after WWII
+
+
+### Communism
+- German philosophers Marx & Engels ($\approx$ 1848)
+- industrial revolution
+- response to class struggles
+
+#### Key concets of Marxism
+- determinism (belief that communism's domination is inevitable)
+- stages of history:
+- 1. **slave society**
+- 2. **feudal**
+- 3. **capitalist** - hierarchy
+- 4. **socialist** - production is owned collectively
+- 5. **communism** - classless utopia
+- class consciousness
+- dictatorship of the proletariat
+
+### Origins of the Cold War
+
+- defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 - Europe jointly occupied by Soviet Red Army (East), Americans and British (West)
+- tension between Stalin (Soviet) and American/British
+- 1945 - Winston Churchill warns of "iron curtain" on Europe
+- Europe and Berlin split into two halves
+
+#### Iron curtain
+- metaphor for blocks (East and West)
+- Yalta conference - Germany divided into four zones
+- US gained economic power (commodities of gold & USD)
+- Truman Doctrine - US president, challenged communism
+- Soviets blocked West Berlin
+- 1949 - Federal Republic of Germany (GDR)
+
+### Berlin
+
+- East Berlin tightly controlled by state - deprivation of essential goods
+- Ulbricht - erected Berlin Wall in $\approx$ 1953 to prevent mass exodus of E. Berlin
+
+### Fall of the Iron Curtain
+- 1985 - Gorbachev's reformist policies - "openness" and "restructuring"
+- some Communist ideals approached capitalism
+- 1973 - East and West Germany joined UN
+- 1990 - reunification