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HORTON HIGH SCHOOL 2014

GLOBAL HISTORY 12Unit 2 – The Cold War Expansion & Containment

PAGE 2The Cold War Heats Up!GLOBAL HISTORY 12

• At the heart of the tension was a fundamental difference in political systems

• America is a democracy that has a capitalist economic system, free elections and competing political parties

• In the U.S.S.R., the sole political party – the Communists – established a totalitarian regime with little or no rights for the citizens

TENSIONS BUILD

PAGE 3Make ‘em Pay!

• After the end of the war, a conference was held in Potsdam, Germany, to set up peace treaties .

• The countries that fought with Hitler lost territory and had to pay reparations to the Allies .

• Germany and its capital Berlin were divided into four parts. The zones were to be controlled by Great Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union.

GERMANY DIVIDED

PAGE 4YOU OWE US

• War reparations are payments intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.

• Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.

REPARATIONS

PAGE 5YOU OWE US

• At the Yalta Conference (February, 1945), the Soviet Union proposed that German reparations be set at approximately $20 billion of which the Soviets wanted half.

• Great Britain and the United States but didn’t finalize an amount.

REPARATIONS

PAGE 6Buffer NeededBUILDING AN IRON CURTAIN

• The Soviet Union suffered an estimated 20 million WWII deaths, half of whom were civilian

• As a result they felt justified in their claim to Eastern Europe. The countries that they liberated should be part of their new ‘union’.

• Furthermore, they felt they needed Eastern Europe as a buffer against future German aggression

PAGE 7Buffer Needed

• The Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.

• The term symbolized efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the west and non-Soviet-controlled areas.

BUILDING AN IRON CURTAIN

PAGE 8Warsaw Pact vs NATOTEAM COMMUNISM VS TEAM DEMOCRACY

• On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union.

• The countries who were part of the Warsaw Pact created an economic and military alliances, with the Soviet Union as the leading state

• Member countries of the European Community and/or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and with the United States as the leading country

PAGE 9Join Our Team!

• Stalin installed “satellite” communist governments in the Eastern European countries of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and East Germany

• This after promising “free elections” for Eastern Europe at the Yalta Conference

WE INSIST

In a 1946 speech, Stalin said communism and capitalism were incompatible – and

another war was inevitable

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Policy of Containment

• Faced with the Soviet threat, Truman decided it was time to “stop babying the Soviets”

• In February 1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, proposed a policy of containment

• Containment meant the U.S. would prevent any further extension of communist rule

STOP THE COMMUNISTS!

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The Truman DoctrineHelping to rebuild

Sir Winston 1948

This doctrine, first used in Greece and Turkey in the late 1940s, vowed to provide aid (money & military supplies) to support “free peoples who are resisting outside pressures”

Churchill

Stop Communism

Containment

Buying Friends

Loyalty $$Truman Doctrine

In a 1946 speech, Churchill said, “An iron curtain has descended across the continent” - the division of Europe

The American policy of “containment” soon expanded into a policy known as the Truman Doctrine”

By 1950, the U.S. had given $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey

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The Marshall Plan

• Post-war Europe was devastated economically

• In June 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a U.S. aid package to European nations

• Western Europe accepted the help, while Eastern Europe (read Stalin) rejected the aid

ECONOMIC AID TO REBUILD EUROPE

The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe recover economically

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The Marshall Plan

• Over the next four years 16 European countries received $13 billion in U.S. aid

• By 1952 Western Europe’s economy was flourishing

ECONOMIC AID TO REBUILD EUROPE

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GERMAN BATTLE

Super Powers struggle over Germany

• At the end of the war, Germany was divided among the Allies into four zones for the purpose of occupation

• The U.S, France, and Great Britain decided to combine their 3 zones into one zone – West Germany, or the federal Republic of Germany

• The U.S.S.R. controlled East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic

• Now the superpowers were occupying an area right next to each other – problems were bound to occur

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BERLIN BLOCKADE 1948

Battle for Berlin• The Berlin blockade (June ‘48 – May

‘49) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War.

• During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under allied control.

• Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviet zone to start supplying Berlin with food, fuel, and aid, thereby giving the Soviets practical control over the entire city.

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BERLIN AIRLIFT

Soviet Plan Foiled

• Not wanting to invade and start a war with the Soviets, America and Britain started the Berlin airlift to fly supplies into West Berlin

• For 327 days, planes took off and landed every few minutes, around the clock

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BERLIN AIRLIFT

Soviet Plan Foiled

• In 277,000 flights, they brought in 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and medicine to the West Berliners

• Realizing they were beaten and suffering a public relations nightmare, the Soviets lifted their blockade in May, 1949

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NATA FORMED

The West Creates a Military Alliance

• The Berlin blockade increased Western Europe’s fear of Soviet aggression

• As a result, ten West European nations joined the U.S and Canada on April 4, 1949 to form a defensive alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization