Candide is a satire by the philosopher Voltaire. It is very critical of the aristocracy and the church, It is also critical of certain tenets of the Enlightenment, especially ideas about social class. The novel uses humor to show the need for social reform.
Answer: EASTERN EUROPE
Context/explanation:
US president Franklin Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, the leaders of the Allies in World War II, met at Yalta in February, 1945.
Churchill and Roosevelt pushed strongly for Stalin to allow free elections to take place in the nations of Europe after the war. At that time Stalin agreed, but there was a strong feeling by the other leaders that he might renege on that promise. The Soviets never did allow those free elections to occur. Later, Winston Churchill wrote, ""Our hopeful assumptions were soon to be falsified." Stalin and the Soviets felt they needed the Eastern European nations as satellites to protect their own interests. A line of countries in Eastern Europe came into line with the USSR and communism. Churchill later would say an "iron curtain" had fallen between Western and Eastern Europe.
By deciding upon the policy of unconditional surrender, the Allies were changing the diplomatic process typically associated with previous wars, such as World War I. Instead of accepting an armistice and then negotiating a peace treaty the Allied forces, led by President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin decided upon a more aggressive approach by demanding a unilateral unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. These terms would be determined by the Allied forces and placed upon of the Axis territories with no negotiation.
This policy placed all of the negotiating power with the Allied powers and gave them the upper hand in designing a post World War II landscape, something especially important to all the countries. Both the United States and Britain had hoped to use these peace terms to stem-off the complete control of Europe by the Soviet Union, while the Soviet Union hoped to use the peace terms to hold the United States and Britain to previously agreed to contributions towards the war.
The “enemies” of the Church in Europe included people who were not Christians. It also included Christians who were labeled heretics, that is, people who challenged the official teachings of the Church or who questioned the pope’s power and authority.
Millions of people, Christian and non-Christian, soldiers and noncombatants lost their lives during the Crusades. In addition to the enormous loss of life, the debt incurred and other economic costs associated with the multiple excursions to the Middle East impacted all levels of society, from individual families and villages, to budding nation-states. The wars also resulted in the destruction of cities and towns that lay in the crusaders’ wake. In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon refers to the Crusades as an event in which “the lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country.”
