The Cold WarEast v. West

The World after War

• Cold War began immediately after WWII

• Uneasy wartime alliance between US and USSR collapsed

• Ideological differences could not be bridged– Human rights, civil liberties, religious beliefs

• Mutual suspicion and race for influence

• Decolonization and destabilization

Cold War Introduction

• Major world powers (superpowers) at the end of WWII:– United States– United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

• Capitalist West v. Communist East• “major determinant of international affairs”

for the next 45 years.• United Nations? (more than 100 wars since

end of WWII).

Division of the World

• First World: The United States and Western Europe [also Turkey, Australia, South Africa, Japan].

• Second World: Soviet Union, Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary)

• Third World: Latin America, China & East Asia, Africa & Middle East, India [former colonies].

Dividing Organizations• North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO): U.S. and West, agreed to come to one another’s aid if attacked.

• Warsaw Pact: USSR and friends, Soviet version of NATO

• Non-Aligned Movement: Countries that leaned one way but refused to openly take sides (Ireland, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Albania).

Important Communist Nations

• USSR

• East Europe: Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech., Poland, East Germany, Hungary.

• Cuba

• East Asia: PR China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia.

The “Iron Curtain”

Truman’s Foreign Policy• Truman Administration

adopts a policy of Soviet containment

• Prevent the Soviets from establishing spheres of influence in the eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and western Europe itself– Truman Doctrine– Marshall Plan

Truman Doctrine

• Truman to Congress: “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

• Domino Effect. What is this?– Greece (1947-8), Korea (1950s), Vietnam

(1940s-1970s).

• Client states

Marshall Plan• Sec. of State George C.

Marshall: “Our policy is directed not against country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”

• Funneled money into Europe for reconstruction.

• Weaken Communist subversives in France, Italy

• 1948-1951: $13 billion given for European recovery

Post-war Germany

• Basic tensions began in Germany in 1945.

• Allies could not agree on how to govern Germany following the war.

• Divided Germany into East and West; West controlled W. Germany; USSR controlled E. Germany (Berlin likewise divided).

• Berlin Wall; Berlin Airlift.

Divided Germany

Airlifting needed food and coal into West Berlin

Hot Flashes in a Cold War

• China falls to Communists in 1948• Soviets acquire the atomic bomb in 1949• Communist guerillas led by Ho Chi Minh

threaten French Indochina (Vietnam)• Americans develop a hydrogen bomb in

1950• Communist forces invade South Korea in

1950

Korean War• Korea occupied by Japan during World War

II• Allies responsible for reconstruction• Russian troops in north and Americans in

south; 38th parallel; similar to Germany• North invades June 25, 1950.• United Nations sanctions war on the north

with the US in charge of the forces• 350,000 Americans; 400,000 Koreans;

50,000 from 14 other nations

Domestic Panic• US government and people fear sabotage by alleged

Communist subversives at home.• Second Red Scare• House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938

(HUAC)• Alger Hiss, 1948

– Former State Department worker accused of passing secrets to the Soviets

– Convicted of perjury in 1950• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 1953

– Passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets with Ethel’s brother David Greenglass

– Rosenbergs convicted and executed for espionage

McCarthyism• Who could be trusted?• Rep. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisc.• Believed the State Department, academia,

and Hollywood was infested with Communists– Listed Owen Lattimore of Johns Hopkins

University as the ringleader– Marshall and Eisenhower– Burgess Meredith, Arthur Miller, Charlie

Chaplin, et al.

Alger Hiss

The Rosenbergs