1949: A PIVOTAL YEAR IN THE COLD WAR

In 1949 two events occurred that rocked American postwar confidence. In September the Soviets announced that they had exploded an atomic bomb. The potential threat of nuclear annihilation was an underlying fear for many Americans throughout the 1950s. Truman quickly gave authorization for American scientists to begin work on the hydrogen bomb, a bomb much more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

An equally horrifying event occurred shortly after the successful Soviet atomic test. Since 1945 the United States had been major financial backers of Nationalist China, led by Chiang Kai-shek. Communist guerrilla forces under Mao Tse-tung was able to capture much of the Chinese countryside. In 1949 Mao’s forces captured Peking, the capital city. The People’s Republic of China was established by Mao. Nationalist forces were forced to flee to Formosa (now Taiwan). From Formosa Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists maintained that they were the “true” government of China, and continued to receive a very sizable aid package from the United States. The question of “who lost China” would be repeatedly asked over the next 10 years in the United States, usually to attack the president, Harry Truman, and the Democratic party, who were in power when Nationalist China fell.