Born in Germany in , Henry Kissinger escaped the Nazi regime to become a powerful and controversial U. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
As national security advisor House of Representatives, during its probe of alleged communist influence in the Cuban leader Fidel Castro established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother The domino theory was a Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, each falling like a perfectly aligned row of dominos.
In Southeast Asia, the U. Along with Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Mao is considered one of the most significant communist figures of the However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Greek Communists Clash with the British in Athens.
Colonist Describes Attack by Malay Communists. Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, serving as premier from to Joseph McCarthy During the late s and early s, the prospect of communist subversion at home and abroad seemed frighteningly real to many people in the United States.
Henry A. Fidel Castro Cuban leader Fidel Castro established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Domino Theory The domino theory was a Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, each falling like a perfectly aligned row of dominos.
When Pol Pot died in , he was only just about to face the possibility of trial before the world. Cambodia historian David Chandler says that, as time wears on, Cambodians are steadily overcoming the trauma. Cambodia is a young country, with nearly half its population under the age of Most Cambodians have no direct experience of the conflict. That idea extends to attitudes toward the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.
Contact us at letters time. By Casey Quackenbush. Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives. Please enter a valid email address. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. A peasant from Takeo Province in his sixties explained that in his village after "we grew rainy season and dry season rice and harvested a lot, but we weren't given any of it to eat.
We were only given rice porridge, a big pot of water with just a few grains of rice in it. That was all. How did we know that? We were all thin while they were fat! Almost all of the areas close to Phnom Penh remained under the control of the Lon Nol regime while the Khmer Rouge was fighting for power. When villagers were "liberated" in , they were classified as "new" people, thereby demonstrating that they had not been part of the struggle for liberation prior to - or in some cases, in Kompong Speu, even as early as This classification contrasted to that of the "old" people: those who had lived in villages controlled by the Khmer Rouge prior to and who thus had automatic revolutionary credentials.
These "new" peasants suffered greater hardships than the "Old" peasants only because they had happened to live in geographical locations under the control of the "traitorous" Lon No1 regime before In the village of Kuntuot, Kandal Province, situated 30 km southwest of the capital, peasants explained that many people had fled to Phnom Penh in to avoid the US bombs and Khmer Rouge rockets that fell directly onto their village. After people returned to their native villages, were classified as "new" people, were told to build new homes of two by three meters, and were instructed to obey all the rules of Angka the Khmer Rouge party.
In the meantime, the Khmer Rouge had moved in "old" people from areas under its control further south in Takeo and Kompong Speu provinces, elevated them to positions of authority, and had them overseas the people who had returned from Phnom Penh. The relations between the two groups were tense and at times marked by deep hatred. Accusations of "new" people spying on the "old" sometimes led to executions for "anti-revolutionary activities.
When asked whether the villagers recalled the names of any of the local Khmer Rouge cadres, one woman replied, "We don't remember the names of the Khmer Rouge leaders.
We didn't dare look at the faces of the top leaders. We only worked hard. We were afraid not to work even when we were sick because they might have taken us away to be killed. The murders of ordinary Cambodians, some one million in all, are of course the most shocking, bizarre, and horrific legacy of Pol Pot's tenure.
Mass grave memorials have been established throughout the country, the two most famous being Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek. At Tuol Sleng, a former school in Phnom Penh that was turned into a prison after , some 20, victims were interrogated, tortured, and executed. The skulls and bones of the victims are now housed in Choeung Ek, a suburb of Phnom Penh where prisoners were taken from Tuol Sleng to be executed. In the village of Po Pai Phnom, located a few kilometers outside the remains of the old city of Kompong Speu, the skulls and bones of 30, people who were killed by being struck with hoes to the back of their necks have been piled high in the shape of a pyramid and stored in a simple, unadorned wood building adjacent to the Buddhist temple.
The temple itself was used as a place of torture and killing. Today the rope still hangs from the ceiling from which victims were hung and slammed against a temple mural depicting a disciple of Buddha with his hands over his eyes.
This scene must have depicted a tragically ironic gesture to those whose blood stained the same temple wall.
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