Download Chapter 27 - Chills and Fever During the Cold War, 1945-1960

Chapter 27 - Chills and Fever During the Cold War, 1945-1960
Origins of the Cold War
 The American Stance/ Soviet Aims
 The United States emerged from World War II more powerful than any other nation and it
sought to use that power in the creation of a world order based on the ideals of democracy
 Soviet aims included rebuilding after the ravages of war, and a restructuring of her borders to
prevent a repeat German invasion
 Early Cold War Leadership
 Eisenhower saw Communism as a overreaching world force bent on domination through
subversive activity
 Joseph Stalin, the soviet Leader, possessed almost unlimited power and answered to no one
 Americans distrusted Soviet political aims and generally equated Communism with the Nazi
state
Containing the Soviet Union
 Containment Defined
 George Kennan is generally credited with defining Americas response to the aggressiveness of
the Soviet Union
 Containment theory taught that the Soviets would never turn from their plans of world
domination unless hindered by force at every turn
 Containment created the need for America to assist any country that was perceived to be falling
under the influence of the Soviets
 The Truman Doctrine
 “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are
resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” –Harry Truman
 The Next Steps
 The Marshall Plan: rebuilding the devastations of war-torn Europe with massive American aid
 NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a twelve-member alliance that vowed that an attack
on one nation-member would be an attack on all
Containment in Asia and the Middle East
 Asia
 Internal conflict in China produced a revolution to Communism that the U.S. was in no position
to stifle
 War on the Korean peninsula produced a stalemate between a communist North and a
democratic South that exists to this day
 Vietnam, an American conflict inherited from the French, closely resembled the problems of
Korea with one exception: communism won
 The Middle East
 The state of Israel, created by the United Nations as a homeland for the Diaspora Jews of the
Holocaust, unfortunately displaced thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their traditional lands
along the Mediterranean
 This action solidified Arab hatred of the western sponsors of Israel and put in motion a series of
war and death that survives to this day
The Cold War at Home
 Truman’s Loyalty Program
 Truman, worried about the influence of communism within the borders of the U.S., created the
Employee Loyalty Program in 1947
 Although only dismissing several hundred employees overall, Truman’s program set a precedent
for government review of who could be considered a threat due to a belief system
 Joe McCarthy
 The key anti-Communist Senator of the 1950s
 Virtually unknown beforehand, he make a reputation uncovering Communist plots and targeting
anyone outside his narrow version of “American”
 General public alarm over the evils of Communism allowed McCarthy the latitude to destroy
many reputations needlessly