Prophecies, Slogans and War Cries Quiz

Answer: 'Stabbed in the back'

The 'stab in the back' was used to explain how the Army was forced to ask for an Armistice while it was still effectively fighting on enemy soil. The collapse of civilian morale and the seething atmosphere of revolution combined with a series of reverses the Army had suffered by November 1918 had forced Germany to seek an immediate Armistice with the Allies.

The feeling of despair and humiliation was particularly felt by one Army corporal who was recovering from the effects of a British gas attack at Ypres a few months before when he heard the shattering news.

He seized on the 'stab in the back' theory and combining it with his pathological hatred of Jews and communists it give him a new sense of purpose. The world was condemned to a repeat of the horrors it had just endured.

Answer: pips

The pent up anger of four years of suffering was reflected by this slogan from the general election of December 1918 just one month after the Armistice. Prime Minister Lloyd George was re-elected in this atmosphere of revenge but had grave misgivings about imposing a harsh treaty on Germany because he saw that this would only bring a temporary peace.

However his voice of moderation was drowned out by French and Italian calls for harsh conditions. The resulting Treaty of Versailles proved to be not as moderate as Lloyd George wanted, as vindictive as Clemenceau the French prime minister hoped for, nor as utopian as Wilson the American president desired.

The Germans felt that the onerous 'war guilt' clause was particularly unjust and this resentment ensured that another generation were condemned to suffer an even greater calamity in the future.

Answer: Casablanca

President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met at Casablanca in January 1943 and issued their demand for 'Unconditional Surrender' from the Axis powers. The term was originally used in the United States during the Civil War and Roosevelt introduced it as the objective of the Allies. Stalin declined to attend the conference as it was too far from the Soviet Union but implicitly endorsed the objective when he met Roosevelt and Churchill at Teheran later in the year.

Some critics have questioned this declaration as forcing the Axis to dismiss diplomacy and deciding that they had nothing to lose by fighting to the bitter end. De Gaulle also attended the Casablanca conference in order to affirm his leadership of the Free French in the wake of the recent Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa.

Answer: Trieste

Trieste on the Adriatic marked the border between communist controlled Yugoslavia and Italy and marked the southern most land border of territory that had fallen under control of the Soviet Red Army and Yugoslav communists. The peoples to the east of the "iron curtain" were to be subjected to the power of totalitarian governments controlled from Moscow where people were kept in and information kept out.

In the Soviet Union, Stalin viewed the speech as confirming his view that conflict with the west was inevitable and this became the basis of the cold war which was to last for the next forty years.

The "iron curtain" soon took physical form with barbed wire fences, minefields and ever alert border security patrols imposing strict control of movement across the borders.

Answer: Curtis LeMay

This suggestion was made by General Curtis LeMay at a time when limited bombing of North Vietnam called 'Rolling Thunder' was underway, ordered by President Johnson as a 'measured response' to increased acts of aggression. LeMay's inflammatory suggestion was typical of the no holds barred attitude he advocated when conducting war against an enemy.

It was LeMay's XXI bombardment group based in the Marianas that developed the fire bombing technique that burned the heart of most Japanese cities in the last few months of the war. Earlier in the European bombing campaign he had personally led his bomber group in the deep penetration Regensburg bombing mission which suffered heavy losses.

He instituted a policy of court marshalling any crews who aborted a mission without good reason and as a result the sortie rate of his group rose dramatically. During the 1950's he organised the Strategic Air Command (SAC) into an all jet force where aircraft were on patrol continuously ready to deliver America's nuclear deterrent at a moments notice. During the Cuban missile crisis his was the lone voice on the Joint Chief's of Staff who advocated an all out bombing of the missile sites and was ready to eliminate the Soviet nuclear arsenal while the Americans still had the advantage. Curtis LeMay was the archetypal cold war warrior and was parodied in the black comedy 'Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' where a cigar chomping, gum chewing George C Scott put on an unforgettable performance as a gung-ho fire-eater.

Answer: Harold Macmillan

When Harold Macmillan delivered his speech he signalled that Britain was committed to the de-colonisation of Africa, a process which had begun in 1957 when the former colony of Gold Coast became the new independent nation of Ghana. Most of Britain's and France's colonies were independent nations by the mid 1960s. South Africa was an independent country and a member of the Commonwealth at the time Macmillan made his comments but the tone of the speech indicated that Britain wanted the Nationalist government to drop its policy of apartheid.

It is probably no coincidence that South Africa left the Commonwealth and declared itself a republic shortly thereafter. Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister from 1957-63 after taking over from Anthony Eden who had been disgraced in the wake of the Suez Crisis. Alec Douglas-Home was appointed PM after Macmillan was forced to resign because of health problems. Winston Churchill had long since retired at the time of 'The wind of change' speech.

Answer: Alexander Dubcek

Alexander Dubcek had ousted long time hardliner Anton Novotny and initiated these reforms in response to an economic downturn that the Czechoslovakian economy suffered in the mid 1960s. The reforms were fairly mild but as so often happens in these cases they released the pent up frustrations of the people which had been so long suppressed, leading to a movement which became known as the 'Prague Spring'.

The calls for reform were moving far past anything Dubcek and his colleagues had envisioned and they tried hose down expectations so as not to alarm their neighbours.

It was all too much for the hard men in the Kremlin who sent in 200,000 troops and 5000 tanks on August 21 to crush the reform movement. Communist orthodoxy was re-imposed and the reformers were removed from power and demoted to minor positions.

The invasion was a very visible demonstration of the Brezhnev Doctrine which declared that individual national interests were subordinate to those of the Eastern Bloc. When Gorbachov introduced his own policies of 'glasnost' and 'perestroika' in 1987 he was asked how these differed from 'Socialism with a human face'.

His reply was "19 years!" Imre Nagy was the Hungarian leader at the time of the 1956 revolution which was betrayed by Janos Kadar who rode in on the coat-tails of the Soviet invasion which crushed this reform movement.

Answer: Manifest Destiny

The term 'Manifest Destiny' was first used by journalist John L O'Sullivan in 1845 when urging that the United States should annex the newly independent Republic of Texas. He explained his prophesy as "the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence".

He later used the Oregon dispute with Britain to expand on his theme and saw the incorporation of California and the other South Western territories into the United States in the wake of the Mexican war as a natural consequence of this process. Politicians and promoters later used the theme as a way of explaining how the American values of justice and freedom should prevail in all those areas under their control.

Answer: Leyte

There is a famous photo of General MacArthur wading ashore from a landing craft on the beach at Leyte in the central Philippines after the successful landings there which enabled him to fulfil his pledge. This was the culmination of a long campaign that had begun when MacArthur, as commander of the South Western Pacific area (The Australian Prime Minister had placed his forces under his overall command), had led Allied forces through the arduous New Guinea campaign, neutralising the Japanese bastion at Rabaul and island hopped their way up to the Philippines. The Japanese put up strong resistance to his landing and the resulting Battle of Leyte Gulf was probably the greatest naval battle of all time but was the death knell of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In Jan 1945 the invasion of the main island of Luzon took place and after an arduous campaign of many months the re-occupation of the Philippines was complete.
Mindanao is the main southern island of the Philippines which was bypassed during the re-occupation
Saipan is the northern island of the Marianas group which US Marines had occupied in June 1944 when they overcame fierce Japanese resistance.

Answer: Ethiopia

After watching a documentary on the plight of starving children in famine stricken Ethiopia musician Bob Geldof was inspired to use his contacts in the music world to stage a charity concert to relieve their suffering. The project struck a chord with the public (pun not intended!) and the resulting Live Aid concert became a world-wide phenomenon with follow-up concerts in subsequent years.

The project became known as 'Feed the world' after a line which appeared in the final credits of the video of the concert.

The signature song 'Do they know its Christmas?' became the biggest selling single on the UK charts at the time of its release.