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America believed that they were solving the problem of Communism from spreading throughout Guatemala. What they ended up doing instead is send Guatemala through 4 decades of struggle and suffering.
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With 1944 coming around, Guatemala was able to elect their first President ever, and another success transfer of presidency in 1950. to Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. The issue was that America didn't like this as much as Guatemala was overdeveloping more. There was a huge push for land reform and land distributing, which America lost fruit companies. From 1953 to 1954, there was efforts towards getting rid of Arbenz which the CIA was tasked with doing.
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The CIA started to paint Arbenz in a bad light with propaganda and starting small bombing raids. The operation's code name was PBSUCCESS. With Arbenz's government being isolated by America and that they were losing this fight, Arbenz resigned on June 27th. That brought Castillo Armas into power and America believing that they stopped Communism from spreading in Guatemala.
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On August 29th, 1949, Soviets successfully make their first atomic bomb and detonate it, with the code name of the bomb being "First Lightning". The U.S Found out via a spy plane flying by and caught traces of the radioactivity of the bomb on September 3rd. This all eventually led up to America creating the their hydrogen bomb on November 1st, 1952. The Soviets created their hydrogen bomb three years later with the same impact as America's.
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With America and the Soviets having access to this deadly bomb, this put both nations at risk of a thermonuclear war. This also gave America only a short-term advantage during the Nuclear race.
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Fidel Castro's rise first started when he attacked Moncada Army with 120 men. This ended up failing and getting himself thrown in prison and America ended up backing Batista's side. Castro ended up trying again a year later, with only 19 people surviving that attack. He ended up attracting attention and got more people to join him throughout 1957. In 1958, Batista tried to get rid of Castro, but Castro launched a counterattack and eventually won control. He took control as prime minister.
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With Castro coming to power in Cuba, it gave the Soviet Union a very important ally. Their relationship with each other helped each other economic wise. Soviet's helped provide political, military, and economic help.
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By the time 1961 came, the tensions from the Cold war was rising. In East Berlin, many of the people who were trapped there were getting sick of the communist rule, so many have left to the west side. This didn't sit well with the Soviets, as they were losing people for their economy. So to prevent people from crossing to the west half, they decided to close off the access to both sides. It originally was built with barbed wires and was set up from August 12th to 13th.
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With the Berlin wall going up, it was showing a lack of freedom within Communism and the Iron Curtain. It's also stated that the wall held a grasp between Democracy and Communism, with Berlin being right in the middle of it.
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With the fall of the wall, it showed that the Communist government was now failing in Eastern Europe. Once the wall fell, it lead to the end of the Soviet Union with tons of predictions which came true for the end.
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The Berlin Wall officially fell on November 9th, 1989, and the reunification of Germany took place on October 3, 1990. The fall officially started when the Communist party leader in East Germany announced that people could officially cross the border. Two million people crossed the border to celebrate in West Germany. Many people started to destroy the wall with hammers, and some with cranes. This was what some considered to be the end of the Cold War.
