Debates

In 1950, war broke out between North and South Korea, the most significant conflict yet in the Cold War. In 1950, Harry Truman signed a top-secret document declaring that “every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation” as long as “freedom” had to do battle against Soviet “slavery.” In 1950, Indians celebrated the approval of their recently independent nation’s first constitution. In 1950, Mao Zedong consolidated his hold over the newly established People’s Republic of China, the founding of which had marked the biggest advance in communism’s reach since the birth of the Soviet Union. In 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman called for an international organization that could supervise French and German production of coal and steel; Schuman’s proposal would lead, eventually, to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community, forerunner of the European Union. In 1950, Britain’s voters returned the Labour government to power, barely; they rescinded this stay of execution one year later, ushering in more than a decade of Conservative rule.