Four years after the end of the most destructive war ever fought
by man, it seemed that countries with different political systems would
never clash again. The Cold War was gaining momentum culminating in the
April 4, 1949, signing by ten European countries, the United States and
Canada, of the North Atlantic Treaty. The signatories pledged to work closely
and, acting in line with the UN Charter, to jointly repulse an enemy attack.
To implement these goals, they established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
with a joint military force commanded by the US General Dwight Eisenhower.
The Eastern European nations responded by strengthening their
unity and on January 25, 1949, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the
USSR and Czechoslovakia set up the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
to jointly handle the maze of economic problems facing the divided Europe.
In 1949 Germany split in two. Shortly after a monetary reform
was effected in the three western occupation zones, the parliamentary council
concluded its discussions of the Basic law of the new state. The Federal
Republic of Germany was officially proclaimed in May and in October the
German Democratic Republic was also unveiled in the Soviet occupation zone.
Almost simultaneously, the People's Republic of China came into being ending
the war which Mao Zedong and his Communists had long been fighting with
the Kuomintang. The Communist takeover of the world's most populous country
sent waves of discontent and even panic running across the United States…
In August 1949 the Soviet Union detonated its own atomic device
thus ending the American monopoly on the most destructive weapon ever conceived
and adding a whole new dimension to the military and political rivalry
between the two superpowers. Also in August, on the 12th to be more exact,
representatives of 188 countries signed the Geneva Conventions for the
protection of war victims. The signatory states pledged to work towards
"the amelioration of the condition of peaceful civilians, the wounded
and sick in armed conflicts wherever they may happen in the world."
Three months before that, ten Western European countries signed in London
the Founding Charter of the Council of Europe, a representative body which
held its opening session in Strasbourg and has since made his headquarters
there. During that very first meeting, the member countries approved a
string of major documents, including the European Convention for Human
Rights.
It's been exactly 50 years since the SOS. Children's Village
organization was set up in 1949 to tend for orphaned and homeless children.
Instead of placing them in traditional orphanages, the new organization
was trying to create a family-like environment for the neglected kids.
385 such children's villages have since appeared in 130 countries all around
the world.
In 1949 Prince Rainier III ascended the throne of the Principality
of Monaco and the American author William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize
for literature. In the same year the world learned about the death of the
outstanding German engineer Karl Friedrich Benz, the inventor of the gasoline
engine which started appearing in cars as back as in 1885! The great engineer
lived a long and fascinating life and died at the very advanced age of
105…
In 1949 they were marking 100 years since the death of the great
American writer Edgar Allan Poe. His demise gave rise to a strange tradition
though. Each year, on the day of Poe's death, a tall gentleman in black
comes to the cemetery of the tiny Westminster Church in Baltimore. He places
his hands of the gravestone, says a prayer and disappears leaving behind
three roses and an unfinished bottle of brandy. Well, the three roses could
symbolize the writer himself, his mother and wife, all buried in this very
same cemetery. As to the brandy, I guess its symbolism can hardly be missed
…
THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series
of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.
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