Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 2017History – The USA and the World, 1945-2003

Sujet 1 – Berlin at stake

Doc. 1 – President Truman recalling his meeting with General Lucius Clay, commander in chief of the US Forces in Europe considered the “father” of the Berlin Airlift, on 22 July 1948, in his Memoirs

Clay said the abandonment of Berlin would have a disastrous effect upon our plans for Western Germany. It would also slow down European recovery. The (West) Germans were concerned about the possibility of our leaving Berlin. We should go to any lengths to find a peaceful solution to the situation, but we had to remain in Berlin. He reported that the airlift was more than enough to meet food requirements, but was inadequate to include the necessary amounts of coal. I asked General Clay if there were any indications that the Russians would go to war. He said he did not think so. What they seemed to be aiming at was to score a major victory by forcing us out of Berlin, either now or after winter weather forced us to curtail the airlift.

Doc. 2 – A cartoon by L. Illingworth (a Welsh political cartoonist), April 1948

Doc. 3 – Cartoon by the Austrian cartoonist Mirko Szewczuk, representing General Lucius Clay, April 1949

Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 2017Geography – NYC, a global city

Sujet 2 – NYC, a global city

Doc. 1 – Population by Race / Hispanic Origin, NYC, 1970-2011Sources: US Census Bureau, 1970-2000 decennial censuses; 2011 American Community Survey-Summary File

Population Division – NYC Department of City Planning

Doc. 2 – NYC at a glance, taken from the website www.nycedc.com (New York City Economic Development Corporation)

HS diploma: high school diplomaBachelors degree: baccalauréat universitaire, correspondant, dans le système français, à la licence (bac + 3)

Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 2017History – The USA and the World, 1945-2003

Sujet 3 – The Space Race

Doc. 1 – Quotation from Alabama Senator Lester Hill, October 1957The Soviet Union, which only 40 years ago was a nation of peasants, today is challenging our America in (…) the application of science to technology (…). The path we chose to pursue may well determine the future not only of western civilization but freedom and peace for all peoples of the earth.

Doc. 2 – A cartoon by Edwin Marcus, “Awake at last?”, October 1957 1

Doc. 3 – Front Page of the Chicago Daily Tribune , December 7, 1957

Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 20171 Complacency: suffisance, contentement de soi.

Geography – NYC, a global city

Sujet 4 – NYC, a global city

Doc. 1 – Document taken from the website of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, www.panynj.gov

Doc. 2 – BBC New York Correspondent Nick Bryant, introducing his blog, August 2013No city could boast taller skyscrapers. Nowhere had street names, like Broadway and Wall Street, which doubled as realms in their own right. No metropolis had such a large and charismatic personality.Perhaps it is the familiarity of that cityscape which can make strangers feel so quickly at home. "One belongs to New York instantly," the novelist Tom Wolfe has written, "one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years." The home to more than eight million people speaking between them over 800 languages, New York has always been the world's greatest experiment in multiculturalism. New York, as well being as the foremost global city, is the pre-eminent American city - its financial, media and cultural capital. 

Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 2017

History – The USA and the World, 1945-2003

Sujet 5 – The Cuban missile crisis

Doc. 1 – President J. F. Kennedy's Speech announcing the quarantine against Cuba, Washington, Oct. 22, 1962“Good evening my fellow citizens, (…) Unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere. (…) This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base (...) constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas, in flagrant and deliberate defiance of the Rio Pact of 1947 (…). To halt this offensive build-up, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. (...) We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.(…) Finally, I want to say a few words to the captive people of Cuba, to whom this speech is being directly carried by special radio facilities. I speak to you as a friend, as one who knows of your deep attachment to your fatherland, as one who shares your aspirations for liberty and justice for all. And I have watched and the American people have watched with deep sorrow how your nationalist revolution was betrayed, and how your fatherland fell under foreign domination. Now your leaders are (…) puppets and agents of an international conspiracy which has turned Cuba (…) into the first Latin American country to become a target for nuclear war – the first Latin American country to have these weapons on its soil.(…) The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards (…). The cost of freedom is always high – but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose (…) is the path of surrender or submission.”

Doc. 2 – Cartoon by the German cartoonist HeKo, 1962‘What do you mean: a menace? Surely it’s all right to go fishing, isn’t it?’

Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 2017

History – The USA and the World, 1945-2003

Sujet 6 – The Vietnam War

Doc. 1 – Speech delivered by President Lyndon B. Johnson at John Hopkins University, April 7, 1965 (excerpts)

“Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves – only that people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way. We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary. In recent months attacks on South Vietnam were stepped up. Thus it became necessary for us to increase our response and to make attacks by air. This is not a change of purpose. It is a change in what we believe that purpose requires. We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who bravely borne this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam – and all who seek to share their conquest – of a very simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement. We will use our power with restraint and with all the wisdom that we can command…”

Doc. 2 – Photograph of the My Lai massacre, March 16 th , 1968

Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 2017

History – The USA and the World, 1945-2003

Sujet 7 – The USA and the World in 1945

Doc. 1 – Excerpt from Georgii Konstantinovich Zhukov, The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov, 1971 Zhukov is remembering the day (24 July 1945) when Truman told Stalin that he had

‘a new weapon of unusual destructive force’.Truman informed Stalin that the United States now possessed a bomb of exceptional power, without, however, naming it the atomic bomb. Stalin did not betray his feelings and pretended that he saw nothing special in what Truman had imparted to him. Both Churchill and many other Anglo-American authors subsequently assumed that Stalin had really failed to fathom2 the significance of what he had heard.  In actual fact, on returning to his quarters after this meeting, Stalin, in my presence, told Molotov about his conversation with Truman. The latter reacted almost immediately. ‘(…) We'll have to speed things up.’  I realized that they were talking about research on the atomic bomb.It was clear already then that the US Government intended to use the atomic weapon for the purpose of achieving its Imperialist goals from a position of strength in ‘the cold war’.

Doc. 2 – Cartoon by Hugh Hutton, published in The Philadelphia Inquirer , 7 August 1945

Doc. 3 – A cartoon by David Low , Baby Play with Nice Ball, 9 th August, 1945

Bac Blanc, Lycée Paul Valéry January 2017

2 To fathom: sonder, pénétrer.

Geography – NYC, a global city

Sujet 8 – NYC, a global city

Doc. 1 – Aerial picture of NYC

Doc. 2 – Article entitled «   New Tech is now New York’s Second Largest Sector   », excerpted from The Verge 3 , September 2013

New York City’s economy has traditionally been dominated by finance, real estate, and media. But tech may be taking hold as a staple4 of the private sector, according to a new report, "Building a Digital City: the Growth and Impact of New York City’s Tech / Information Sector" (…). The study gives some clues as to how New York pulled off5 what many other cities are desperately attempting to do: invent a tech startup scene.Rapid job growth has made the city’s tech and information industry the second-largest contributor to the private sector economy by wages, according to the study. The tech sector is also booming in the outer boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, while the national tech industry is attracting Hispanic and Black workers faster than White ones.Tech is often billed as the solution to waning6 job growth in the US, and this study appears to confirm that. In 2009, New York City’s Independent Budget Office forecast that the city’s economic recovery from the Great Recession would lag behind the rest of the nation’s. Instead, New York pulled out of the recession faster than the rest of the country, in part due to the growth in the tech sector, says economist Michael Mandel, who conducted the study. (…)These new information and tech workers may also be more diverse than those the industry has traditionally attracted, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of Hispanic and Latino workers nationally working at computer or math-related occupations has risen by 28 percent in the last two years, while the number of Black workers rose 23 percent and the number of Asian workers rose 18 percent.”

3 The Verge est un site américain lancé le 21 octobre 2011 [1] qui traite de l'actualité technologique, de l'information et des médias. Il est édité par Vox Media à Manhattan.4 A staple: produit, article de base. 5 To pull off: réaliser, mener à bien. 6 To wane: décliner.