Chapter 26
In This Chapter
• The beginning of the Cold War
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
• Responses in Eastern and Western Europe
• The Cold War gets frigid
• The thawing of relations
At the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as ideological rivals in Europe and the world. The process of the United States and the Soviet Union moving from allies to enemies started in 1945 when Stalin refused to remove Soviet occupation troops from Eastern Europe. The United States wanted self-determination for these and the rest of the nations in Europe. The Soviet Union under Stalin wanted a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. As a result, the Soviet armies stayed and tensions grew between the nations. The tensions between the nations were called a “cold war.”
Plans and Doctrines
Harry Truman was an unknown senator from Missouri who had little experience in foreign affairs, so not much was expected from Franklin Roosevelt’s selection for vice-president. But after only 82 days, he became president of the United States when Roosevelt died in office. Truman had met Roosevelt only twice before.
President Truman responded to the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union with the Truman Doctrine in 1946, stating that the United States would provide money to any country that was threatened by communist expansion. The Truman Doctrine officially expressed the tension between the Soviets and the Americans, and by 1947 it became apparent to the Soviets that the United States had adopted a policy of containment to keep communism within the existing boundaries of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
After World War II, the rebuilding of Europe was a concern for the United States. The Marshall Plan, enacted in June 1947, was meant to rebuild Europe into a stable, prosperous region, with the belief that communist revolution only occurred in economically unstable nations. So 13 billion dollars in aid were offered to the nations of Europe, although the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states refused to participate. The Soviets responded to the Marshall Plan with their own plan to aid Eastern Europe in 1949. It was called the Council for Mutual Assistance, or COMECON, but failed because the Soviet Union could not afford to bankroll it.
definition
A satellite state is a small state that is economically and/or politically dependent on a larger, more powerful state. Generally satellite states adjust their policiesbased on the desires of the larger state.
The Problem in Germany
At the end of World War II, territory in the defeated nation of Germany was divided by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union into four allied zones. The capital of Berlin, located in the middle of the Soviet zone, was also divided into four zones. In 1948, the United States, Great Britain, and France made plans to unify their respective zones into the nation of West Germany. Threatened by this plan, the Soviet Union responded by blockading Berlin of all food and supplies.As a result, the United States and Great Britain airlifted supplies to Berlin, dropping 1 million tons of supplies into the city. Eventually, the Soviet Union realizedthe futility of its actions and lifted the blockade in May 1949. The Berlin Airlift was a success.
In September 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany, referred to as West Germany, was created. Its capital was the city of Bonn. The Soviet Union also set up a nation from its occupied zone of Germany creating in October 1949 the German Democratic Republic. Its capital was East Berlin.
Notable Quotable
"Let us not be deceived— we are today in the midst of a cold war.”
—Bernard Baruch, United States presidential advisor, 1947
Alphabet Soup
The Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union continued to rise through the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1949, the Chinese communists took control of the government of China. The United States perceived this as part of the monolithic, Soviet-led spread of communism. Also in 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first hydrogen bomb, sparking an arms race. By 1952, both the United States and the Soviet Union had developed the hydrogen bomb. In the mid-1950s, the superpowerscreated the technology to build intercontinental ballistic missiles in which to deliver the atomic weapons on its enemy. The superpowers then adopted the militarystrategy of Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD, based on the assumption that neither nation would attack because both nations would be destroyed as a result. It was a no-win war, so no superpower would start it.
The arms race became a space race in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. From there, the superpowers raced to put the first man in space and then the first man on the moon.
The superpowers also created a series of military alliances to protect their interests around the world. In April 1949, an agreement of mutual protection and cooperationwas made among the nations of Belgium, Luxembourg, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Iceland, Canada, West Germany, Turkey, and the United States, called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. In response, the Soviet Union created a similar organization in 1955 called the Warsaw Pact, which included the nations of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
Other treaty organizations were created with the idea of isolating the communist nations of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. The Southeast Treaty Organization, or SEATO, was an agreement between the United States, Great Britain, France, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. CENTO included Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Great Britain, and the United States. By the end of the Cold War era, the United States had allied itself with over 40 differentnations globally.
Satellite Conflicts
Although the Cold War was not a direct conflict between the two superpowers, it was a conflict nonetheless. These political and military conflicts ensued as the superpowerscompeted for spheres of influence in satellite nations of central Europe, Latin America, and Southeast and East Asia.
Another Brick in the Wall?
With the West Germans enjoying the many freedoms of democracy, it was natural that East Germans would want to migrate to the West. The problem was that they could not. The communist governments were particularly insistent on making the people stay in the country. As a result, barbed wire fences and border guards were placed to keep people in some of the communist nations.
In August 1961, Nikita Kruschev, the Soviet leader at the time, ordered that a wall be built in East Berlin to separate it from West Berlin and to help prevent East Germans from escaping. Of course, this gesture was not truly needed. There were plenty of guards, guns, and barbed wire to separate East from West Berlin. But it did add to the Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cold War between the Soviets and the Americans almost became hot with the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and set up a communist regime in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy, worriedabout a communist regime so close to American shores, approved a secret plan to support Cuban exiles in an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, to overthrow the communist Castro. This plan failed disastrously, but it angered Castro enough to seek help from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union started to send arms and advisors to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs incident. Then in 1962, Kruschev sent nuclear missiles to the island nation in response to the United States placing nuclear missiles in Turkey (a U.S. ally). In October 1962, Kennedy got wind of the Cuban missiles and also that more missiles were being sent, so he ordered a U.S. naval blockade of Cuba, which caused some very tense moments as each superpower threatened nuclear war.
Finally, in this game of nuclear chicken, Kruschev blinked. He ordered the Soviet ships to return and removed the nuclear missiles from Cuba. From that point, the superpowers saw the need for open communicationbetween Washington and Moscow. In 1963 they installed the red phone, a direct line between the nuclear superpowers.
Notable Quotable
"We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.”
—U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, October 24, 1962
Domino Theory and Vietnam
The U.S. policy of containment was apparent in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The United States led a small United Nations military force to stop communist North Korea supported by the Soviet Union and later the People’s Republic of China from taking over democratic South Korea. The war ended in a uneasy stalemate and finally armistice. This armistice created a military demarcation line between North and South Korea that continues to exist today.
In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson sent U.S. troops to Vietnam to prevent the communisttakeover of South Vietnam by North Vietnam. Johnson believed that if South Vietnam fell to communism, other nations of Southeast Asia would soon follow. He also thought that the Soviet Union and China were together coordinating a communisttakeover in Southeast Asia starting with Vietnam. This was Johnson’s domino theory.
In the Vietnam War, U.S. troops ended up fighting a defensive war in South Vietnam against North Vietnamese troops and the Viet Cong, who were South Vietnamese communist sympathizers. With a strong antiwar movement emerging in the United States, the war dragged on for U.S. forces. In 1968, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacked U.S. forces across South Vietnam in the Tet Offensive. Although militarilya failure, the Tet Offensive galvanized U.S. public opinion against the Vietnam War. In 1973, U.S. President Nixon agreed to withdraw U.S. forces from the region and by 1975, South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese forces.
In the end, the domino theory that Johnson used in defense of U.S. involvement in South Vietnam turned out to be wrong. China and the Soviet Union did not have strong enough relations to coordinate the spread of communism in Asia. In fact, the North Vietnamese communist movement was a nationalist movement. Ho Chi Minh even compared himself to George Washington and other American freedom fighters. Communism did not spread to the rest of Southeast Asia after Vietnam.
Behind the Curtain
In the late 1940s, Winston Churchill used the term “iron curtain“ to denote the division between Western and Eastern Europe. This division was enhanced in 1948 when the Soviet Union took control of the governments of Eastern Europe to ensure that they remained communist. With Soviet direction, the governments of East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Hungary created five-year plans similar to the Soviets. These plans emphasized heavy industry rather than consumer goods. They also collectivized agriculture and eliminated all noncommunist parties. But the Soviet-guided plans were used to exploit the Eastern European nations, so the communism created in these countries did not have deep roots.
The lack of deep communist roots was apparent beginning in the 1950s. When the Soviet Union made it known that independence from Soviet directives was not an option, the people of Eastern Europe protested, with mixed results. In 1956, the Polish protested the situation and the Polish communist party responded with reforms. The secretary of the Polish communist party decided to pursue an independentdomestic path in Poland but continue to be loyal to the Warsaw Pact.
In Hungary, the protests persuaded Imre Nagy, the political leader of Hungary, to declare that Hungary was a free nation on November 1, 1956. He also promised free elections that would include other noncommunist parties. The Soviets did not care for that type of talk and on November 4, 1956, the Soviet army invaded Hungary and took control of Budapest, the Hungarian capital. Nagy was captured and later executed.
In Czechoslovakia there was also a call for change. In January 1968, Alexander Dubcek was elected as first secretary of the communist party of Czechoslovakia. He made reforms to satisfy the Czech people, including freedom of speech, press, and travel. Dubcek also promised to democratize the political system. This time of reform was referred to as the “Prague Spring,” but it was too much to bear for the Soviets, and a Soviet army moved in and crushed the reform movement.
Take Me to the Other Side
The end of World War II and the ascension of the United States and Soviet Union as the two superpowers had dethroned the European nations as world powers. But compared with the other side of the curtain in Eastern Europe, the people of Western Europe were enjoying economic prosperity and democratic freedoms.
Eventually this economic freedom and prosperity led to unity in Western Europe. In 1957, France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy signed the Rome Treaty. The treaty created the European Economic Community (EEC) or Common Market. The EEC was a free-trade area benefiting the member nations economically, and it became one of the largest exporters of finished goods and purchasers of raw materials.
The EEC gained members as time went by. In 1973, Great Britain, Ireland, and Denmark joined, followed by Spain, Portugal, and Greece in 1986. Finally in 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the economic club, by which time the EEC had transformed into the beginning of another treaty, the Treaty of European Union.
Enacted in 1994, the goal of the EU was to create a common currency, end any trade barriers between the European nations, and create a sizeable economic entity. They accomplished those goals on January 1, 2002, by instituting the common currency the Euro. The EU process was Europe becoming free of old Cold War politics. Eastern Europe did the same but by another route.
Thawing and Freezing
In the 1970s, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union improved considerably. As a result, the United States started to sell excess stores of American grain to the Soviet Union, which needed it. But the thaw in relations went frigid in 1979 with the Soviet invasion of the nation of Afghanistan. Détente officially ended when U.S President Jimmy Carter stopped grain shipments to the Soviet Union.
definition
Détente refers to the lessening of tensions between nations due to treaties or trade agreements.
The tension between the countries again increased when U.S. President Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office. Reagan considered the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and said so to the American public. He also sent aid to Afghan rebels that
What in the World
By the early 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union had more than 12,000 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) each pointed at each other. The superpowers would not only destroy each other with a nuclear exchange but the rest of the world, too. Actually they had enough missiles to destroy the world seven times over.
were fighting the Soviet army. Finally, in a televised presidential address, Reagan announced his intention to create the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, a missile defense program also called “Star Wars” that would destroy incoming Soviet nuclear missiles in space while allowing U.S. nuclear missiles to reach the Soviet Union. To the Soviets, it appeared that another arms race in space had started.
Tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States escalated a great deal during the early 1980s. Most of the nations of the world were aligned with one or the other while the rest of the world held its collective breath.
Tensions were high when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. But, unlike his predecessors, Gorbachev was a progressive communist. In 1987, with his guidance, the United States and Soviet Union came to an agreement to eliminate intermediate range nuclear weapons. This agreement was good for both of the superpowers. It gave Gorbachev time to work on much-needed Soviet economicreforms, and the United States to change its status as one of the largest debtor nations.
As part of his economic reforms, Gorbachev stopped providing economic support to the communist countries of Eastern Europe. As a result, democratic reform movementswept through Eastern Europe in 1989. By October 3, 1990, East and West Germany had reunited as one country. It wasn’t long before the Soviets themselves were swept into the democratic reform movement. Gorbachev, in his effort to provide economic reform for his country, had opened the door to more freedoms. Once the freedoms followed into the communist nations, they could not be stopped. By 1991, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved into a multitude of republics. The communismof the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was gone. In just a few years, the Cold War had simply melted away.
A New Economy in the West
After the end of the world wars, a new society emerged in the West. With new technologiesbuilt on the successes of industrialization, Western civilization transformed from the industrial to the computer age. Change accelerated after World War II, with communication and transportation innovations such as television, computers, and cheap air transportation, all creating a more complex and mobile society.
The middle class, who before the world wars were factory managers and shopkeepers, turned within a matter of decades into technicians and tech managers. Industrial or working classes also declined as Western industry was outsourced to other developingnations. With advances in agriculture, the numbers of farmers decreased drastically, too. While these decreases continued into the twenty-first century, the white-collar class increased, filling the ranks of service-oriented businesses (corporationsand banks) that spread throughout the Western world. The West turned into a consumer society depending on other nations to supply it with consumer goods while it focused on service industries.
The status of women changed considerably after the mid-twentieth century. Women had acquired voting rights during the early twentieth century and entered the workforcein more numbers after World War II. Despite the spike in birthrates during the “baby boom,” the size of families in the West decreased dramatically during the latter twentieth century. Finally during the late 1960s, there was a renewed interest in feminism, or women’s liberation. More and more women started to fight inequalities in the workplace and the home. By the end of the twentieth century, women had started to make real progress toward equality of the sexes.
Notable Quotable
"And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Almost nowhere is her legal status the same as man’s, and frequently it is much to her disadvantage. Even when her rights are legally recognized in the abstract, long-standing custom prevents their full expression.”
—Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949
After World War II, higher education opened up for most of the Western society. Universities and colleges allowed for larger class sizes to bring in more students. This meant that professors provided less attention to each individual student. As a result, discontent was high among the student population by the 1960s. Additionally, a wave of student radicalism swept through the universities. There were several causes for this movement, including protests over the Vietnam War and calls for reform in the universities. Some students believed that the universities did not respond to student needs or to the realities of the modern world. The Paris demonstrations of 1968 and were the high-water mark for the European student protest movement. With reform, this movement lost steam and faded by the late 1970s. Some of these student protestorsbecame the middle class professionals that populated the corporations of the West. With the opening of higher education, the Western nations established their lead role in the development of the computer age.
The Least You Need to Know
• At the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two superpowers of the world.
• The tensions that resulted from different ideologies and actions resulted in the era known as the Cold War.
• Most of the nations of the world aligned with one of the superpowers during the Cold War.
• The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union, beset with economic problems, experienced a democratic revolution.
• The Western world moved from the industrial to the computer age with significantand rapid changes in society as a result.