It

It’s Been a Long Hard Winter!

The Cold War, 1945-1963

I don’t believe you!

In July of 1945, President Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin met at Potsdam and bargained over the end of WW2 and the future of Europe. The main issues were

· reparations (Stalin wanted to rebuild his war-ravaged economy with German industry) and

· Poland and Eastern Europe (Stalin wanted a buffer zone of loyal, Communist governments between Germany and the Soviet Union).

Truman wanted to see free, independent elections and the redevelopment of Germany. Truman did not trust Stalin, feeling his desire to have Eastern Europe as a buffer was really Soviet expansionism. Stalin did not trust Truman, a holdover from what he felt was a delayed establishment of the Western Front in the war. This distrust is what led to and was the Cold War.

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”

With both sides intent on imposing their values, the division of Europe was inevitable after WW2. Germany was divided into four sectors, with the U.S., British and French championing the reunification of Berlin and Germany. The Soviets immediately began to "communize" their sector and one by one, communist governments loyal to Moscow were established in Eastern Europe. Winston Churchill warned of the "Iron Curtain" which had come down from the Baltic to the Adriatic.

Boom!

The wartime policy of Roosevelt and Churchill (to keep the Manhattan project secret from Stalin) insured an arms race after the war. Stalin learned of the bomb through espionage and immediately began his own program. By 1949, the Soviets had a bomb, so the U.S. quickly began to develop the first hydrogen bomb. The Soviets argued for a simple, total ban on production and use of the weapon, since their national interests were better protected by conventional forces and weapons. The result - neither trusted the other so the programs continued and the Cold War got much scarier.

Harry gets a doctrine!

The U.S. embarked on a new foreign policy, that of Containment. It was argued that the Soviets would continue to aggressively look to expand communism and the U.S. needed a long-term and vigilant containment policy to halt them.

· The first step was to help to the countries of Greece and Turkey, both in danger of falling to Communist insurgencies from within. The 1947 Truman Doctrine gave 400 million dollars aid to the countries and served as an informal declaration of cold war.

· Later that year, Secretary of State George Marshall extended a similar offer of assistance to all of Europe, with the condition of free economic and political institutions. (Capitalism and Democracy) The Soviet Sphere did not respond to the Marshall Plan for obvious reasons.

· The third aspect of containment was the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO - 1949) as a military alliance of European and American countries against Soviet expansion. What this did was place American troops in Europe along with the U.S. nuclear threat and significantly increased the tensions between the U.S. and Soviets.

I dare you!

The main Soviet response to containment came in 1948 with the Berlin Blockade. Testing the resolve of the Allies, the Soviets cut off access from the outside to West Berlin. (West Berlin was inside East Germany.) Truman responded with the Berlin Airlift to supply West Berlin with the necessary materials. At the height of the airlift (about 7 months long), the Americans were flying in 7,000 tons of supplies a day.

Homework Assignment # 37

1. Discuss the issues presented at Potsdam and the ramifications of those discussions.

2. Discuss the basic needs the Soviets had that led to the formations of their policies

following WW2.

3. Discuss how the Americans reacted to the Soviet situation and their strategy in

dealing with the Soviets.

4. Discuss the origins of the containment policy.

5. Discuss the three aspects of containment presented in the text.

6. Discuss the Berlin Crisis.

Not China too!

In the Pacific, the Americans and Soviets quickly acted to establish their spheres of influence as agreed to at Yalta.

· General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of Japanese occupation, supervised the transition of Japan into a constitutional democracy, basically writing the constitution. The Japanese willingly renounced war in their new constitution, relying on the U.S. to protect their security.

· In China, despite attempts to establish a coalition government between the Communist forces of Mao Tse Tung and Nationalist Chaing Kai-shek, a civil war culminated with Mao's forces driving the nationalists off the mainland to the island of Formosa Taiwan in 1949. The United States refused to recognize Communist China, keeping relations with the Nationalists on Taiwan.

Here they come!

In 1950, the first military showdown in the Cold War occurred in Korea.

· In 1945, Korea had been divided at the 38th Parallel with a Soviet sector in the north (Communist government under Kim Il-Sung) and an American sector in the South (Capitalist government under Syngman Rhee).

· In June of 1950, the North invaded the South beginning the Korean Conflict. Though history has shown that the Soviets had little to do with this invasion, they were assumed to be behind it (Cold War mistrust and aggression). Truman called for a meeting of the UN Security Council, which the Soviets boycotted due to other issues (bad move - they passed up the opportunity to used their automatic veto to stop UN involvement!). Thus, the U.S. came to the aid of the South Koreans under the official auspices of the United Nations.

A comeback!

Early on the North Koreans had the best of the fighting, with the advances finally being stopped near the village of Pusan.

· In September, MacArthur led an amphibious landing at Inchon and began to push the North back.

· As Allied forces neared the Yalu River (Chinese border), the Chinese came into the war and pushed the Allies back. The fighting finally stabilized along the 38th Parallel and the Korean Conflict became one of stalemate.

When Truman gave up his idea of unifying Korea, McArthur's refusal to go along led to his dismissal. MacArthur came back to the U.S. as a hero, receiving a ticker-tape parade and a standing ovation in Congress. The stalemate continued until 1953 and the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president.

Eisenhower let the North Koreans and the Chinese know that he was quite willing to use a nuclear bomb (after WW2 - Truman was not willing to go there again!) and an armistice was signed in July of 1953. Korea was left exactly where it was before the fighting - divided along the 38th Parallel.

Witch trials again?

On the home front, the Cold War was seen with a tremendous fear of radicalism and communism (another Red Scare).

· In 1948, Whittaker Chambers (a repentant Communist) accused Alger Hiss of having been a Soviet spy while he was in the State Department in the 1930's. Although the statute of limitations prevented a conviction on perjury, Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950.

· In March of 1947 Truman had given in to the loyalty scare by implementing security checks on government employees, leading to the firing of thousands of workers charged with guilt by association with radicals.

· In 1951, Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg were found guilty of treason (passing atomic secrets to the Soviets) and despite their insistence of innocence were electrocuted in 1953.

· The only thing missing was a leader to release a new outburst of intolerance and hysteria and he surfaced in the name of Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin. In 1950, he delivered a speech in West Virginia and claimed that he had in his hand a list of 205 known members of the Communist Party working for the State Department. He continued to make these claims (always changing the number on the list and never showing the list) throughout the year and McCarthyism was born. This finally got out of hand when McCarthy attacked the U.S. Army and a young lawyer for the army at televised hearings in 1954. Congress finally voted to censure McCarthy and he quickly fell from prominence. However, loyalty oaths for teachers, book banning, black-listing of entertainers and other actions were tolerated for years to come.

In class journal: How does what happened to Matthew Shepard relate to McCarthyism?

Homework Assignment #38

1. Discuss the developments in China.

2. Discuss developments in Korea.

3. What serious miscalculation did Truman and MacArthur make in Korea?

4. What led to the signing of the armistice in 1953?

5. Discuss the different occurrences in the development of McCarthyism.

5. How does Arthur Miller show his feelings about McCarthyism?

What you say?

The election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President and his subsequent appointment of John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State signaled a change in America's reaction to the Cold War. Dulles was an ardent anti-Communist and was very willing to take tense situations right to the edge in order to gain strategic advantage. (brinkmanship)

In order to continue to save money while building U.S. defenses, Eisenhower and Dulles placed the emphasis in U.S. defenses on the air force and the development of weapons of mass destruction. (massive retaliation)

They figured if the cost of attacking the United States was so high, nobody would try. The hydrogen bomb was developed in 1952, delivering an explosion over 1000 times the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviets exploded their own thermonuclear weapon in 1953 and the arms race was on.

Shhh! Don’t tell anyone!

Another of the changes in the foreign policy under Eisenhower was his willingness to use covert actions (Central Intelligence Agency) to further American goals.

· In 1951, when Iran placed the oil industry under government control, American oil companies protested. The CIA directed an overthrow of the government (1953) and placed the Shah of Iran back in control.

· In 1954, the CIA did the same in Guatemala, when the government began land reform programs which took over 200,000 acres of American-owned land and gave it back to the peasants. In both situations, the CIA had overthrown popularly elected leaders (democracy) and replaced them with dictators because of policies that invited socialist ideals.

Yes! I get a doctrine too!

In 1956, the Middle East became the focus of the Cold War as Egypt's Gamal Nasser seized the Suez Canal. The French, British and Israelis were furious with these developments and invaded Egypt in October. This presented a major problem for Eisenhower since the invasion could bring a response from the Soviet Union, a new ally of Egypt. Eisenhower dressed down the French and British and sponsored a UN Resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal from Egypt. He also warned the Soviets (who had intimated they would use missiles in support of Egypt) that the U.S. would in no way tolerate any Soviet intervention. The warning that the U.S. would defend the Middle East from any attack or intervention by a Communist country became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine.

I don’t know what you are talking about!

The U.S. began making secret, high-altitude flights over the Soviet Union to take pictures of bases and weapons. Eisenhower and Khrushchev were to have a summit on the arms race in 1960, but just weeks before the planned conference an American U-2 piloted by Gary Powers was shot down in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev refused to meet with Eisenhower and the 1960's opened with tensions between the superpowers at a high point.

Six scary days in October

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president and began to move towards increasing non-nuclear forces and the ability to use more limited forces and a policy of flexible response. He immediately approved an operation to use Cuban refugees to invade Cuba and overthrow the Communist Fidel Castro (1959 revolution). The Cuban exiles were badly defeated on the beaches and the Bay of Pigs became a fiasco for Kennedy. Subsequent U-2 flights confirmed the building of Soviet missile site in Cuba by October of 1962. The six day Cuban Missile Crisis was the resulting confrontation as American ships placed a blockade on Cuba and came face to face with the Soviet ships that were carrying the supplies needed to make the sites operational. At the height of this brinkmanship, the Soviets backed down and agreed to dismantle to bases.

You stay on your side of the room, and I’ll stay on mine!

Tensions were still high in Berlin, where the Soviets built the Berlin Wall in 1961to stop the flow of people and money from the east to the west. To begin to ease the tensions, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed in 1963 to establish a hot line between the White House and the Kremlin and agreed to a Limited Test Ban Treaty that barred nuclear testing in the atmosphere.

Homework Assignment #39

1. Discuss the policies of brinkmanship and massive retaliation, particularly

concerning the hydrogen bomb.

2. Discuss the use of the CIA as a weapon in Cold War foreign policy.

3. Discuss the Suez Crisis

4. Discuss the Eisenhower Doctrine.

5. Discuss the U-2 incident.

6. Discuss the Bay of Pigs.

7. Discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis.

8. Discuss the Berlin Crisis.

9.Discuss the Limited Test Ban Treaty.

In class journal: How does Jackson Pollack, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Mike Hammer show the fear and uncertainty of the Cold War.