{"id":3831,"date":"2020-08-16T16:34:18","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T16:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/?p=3831"},"modified":"2020-08-16T16:35:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T16:35:28","slug":"korean-war-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/2020\/08\/16\/korean-war-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Korean War"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Yet this war that Americans preferred to forget had enormous consequences.\u00a0 For the Koreans, whose leaders’ suicidal ambitions had sparked it, the results were catastrophic, an estimated three million dead, roughly 10 percent of the population, their country laid to waste.\u00a0 The nation remained divided after the ‘peace’ treaty, the South still occupied by foreign troops. For the major Communist nations, the war had mixed results.\u00a0 By holding its own against the United States, Mao’s China achieved instant great-power status.\u00a0 China’s dependence on the Soviet Union solidified their alliance for the short term, but that very dependence and sharp differences over the conduct of the war opened fissures in the Communist bloc that would widen in the coming decade.\u00a0 For Stalin, who had gambled on Kim’s ability to win a quick victory, the Korean War was a major setback.\u00a0 The pressures he imposed on his East European allies to produce war materials created strains that would provoke uprisings that in tern threatened Soviet control over its vital buffer zone. Korea also produced Stalin’s worst nightmare, a massive buildup of Western European defenses –including the first steps toward German rearmament –and U.S. mobilization for all-out war.”\u00a0 –George Herring,\u00a0From Colony to Superpower,\u00a0<\/em>p. 645<\/p>\n

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