Download 1intro cold war

The Cold War begins 1945 -1948
Terms and Concepts to Know
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Cold War
Domino Effect
Containment
Truman Doctrine
Marshall Plan
What is the Cold
War?
• The tension and rivalry
between the USA and the
USSR was described as the
Cold War (1945-1990).
• There was never a real war
between the two sides between
1945 and 1990, but they were
often very close to war
(Hotspots). Both sides got
involved in other conflicts in
the world to either stop the
spread of communism (USA)
or help the spread (USSR).
Background
• Major point: The USSR lost around 20 million
people in WW2
• Stalin was determined to make the USSR secure in
the future and establish Communism in other
countries.
• By contrast GB lost around 370,000 and the USA
lost 297,000 people.
• KEEP THIS IN MIND
The rise of the superpowers
• Before WW2 there were a number of countries
which could have claimed to be superpowers –
USA, USSR,GB, France, Japan, Germany.
• The damage caused by the war to these countries
left only two countries with the military strength
and resources to be called superpowers….USA
and USSR.
What they believed
• USA was capitalist and USSR was communist
• They were complete opposites
• Capitalism- an economic system in which private
individuals rather than the government control the factors of
production.
• Communism- an economic and political system in which
the government owns almost all of the means of production.
• During WWII they had allied against Fascism ….. Now the
common enemy had been defeated the reason for cooperation was gone
The Ideological Struggle
Soviet &
Eastern Bloc
Nations
[“Iron Curtain”]
GOAL  spread worldwide Communism
METHODOLOGIES:
US & the
Western
Democracies
GOAL  “Containment” of
Communism & the eventual
collapse of the Communist
world.
[George Kennan]
 Espionage [KGB vs. CIA]
 Arms Race [nuclear escalation]
 Ideological Competition for the minds and hearts of Third World
peoples [Communist govt. & command economy vs. democratic govt. &
capitalist economy]  “proxy wars”
After WWII
The Task Ahead
• Two conferences were held in 1945 at Yalta and
Potsdam to discuss what to do after the war
• The aim was to discuss the future especially
– What to do with Germany’s leaders after the war
– What would happen to the occupied countries after
liberation, especially those of Eastern Europe
– How to build a lasting peace.
YALTA (in the USSR)
Date: Feb 1945
Present: Churchill,
Roosevelt and Stalin
POTSDAM (Germany)
Date: July 1945
Present: Churchill,
Truman and Stalin
• At the Yalta Conference it was decided that Germany and
Austria would be divided into four zones controlled by the
US, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.
• At the Potsdam Conference all of the powers agreed
decisions should be made among a council and should be
unanimous.
Problems?
• After the war who would lead the countries and
form new governments. (Remember Hitler has
invaded several countries)
• The USSR favoured the communist groups, the
USA favoured the non-communists in the governing
of these countries
• This was one cause of tension between the
superpowers
STALIN INSTALLS PUPPET
GOVERNMENTS
• 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
In a 1946 speech, Stalin said communism and
capitalism were incompatible – and another war
was inevitable
• In 1946, reparation agreements broke down between the
Soviet and Western zones. Response of the West was to
merge French, British, and American zones in 1947.
• The West wanted to revive the German economy and
combine the three western zones into one area. Soviet
Union feared this union because it gave the one combined
zone more power than its zone.
• On June 23, 1948, the western powers introduced a new
form of currency into the western zones, which caused the
Soviet Union to impose the Berlin Blockade one day later.
• In 1946,
Winston
Churchill
correctly
warned that
the Soviets
were creating
an “iron
curtain” in
Eastern
Europe.
Winston Churchill giving the “Iron
Curtain” address at Westminster
College on March 5, 1946
Winston Churchill - “The Sinews of Peace”
March 5, 1946 - Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an
iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that
line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and
Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest,
Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the
populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet
sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to
Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases,
increasing measure of control from Moscow….Whatever
conclusions may be drawn from these facts - and facts they are
- this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build
up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent
peace….
West
Germany
East
Germany
• After Germany was divided into two parts, East
Germany built the Berlin Wall to prevent its citizens
from fleeing to the west. The wall physically divided
the country into eastern communism and western
democracy. Many East Germans tried to escape to
the west because it was economically prosperous
and granted its citizens more freedoms. The Berlin
Wall is the climax to the separation of Berlin. It was
built on the night of August 12 with barbed wire
entanglements that stretched along the thirty mile
line that divided Berlin.
After World War 2, the world changed!
• Many countries became communist after World
War 2 including:
- Czechoslovakia (1948)
- Poland (1947)
- Hungary (1947)
- China (1949)
- Cuba (1959)
- North Korea (1945)
U.S. ESTABLISHES A 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
The Domino Effect
• The USSR had a lot of influence over many of the
new communist countries (especially those in
Europe).
• The USA was very worried that the USSR’s
influence over these countries was making the
USSR and communism more powerful.
• The USA did not want communism to spread any
further – they were worried about the domino
effect (one country becomes communist, then
another, then another etc)
Domino Theory
Communism spreads like a disease
Truman Doctrine
• March 12, 1947
• Greece and Turkey in danger of falling to
communist insurgents
• Truman requested $400 million from Congress in
aid to both countries.
• The U. S. should support free peoples throughout
the world who were resisting takeovers by armed
minorities or outside pressures…We must assist
free peoples to work out their own destinies in
their own way
• Successful effort
Marshall Plan
• On June 5, U.S. Secretary
of State George Marshall
– proposes a massive aid
program to rebuild Europe
from the ravages of World
War II.
• Nearly $13 billion in U.S.
aid was sent to Europe from
1948 to 1952.
– The Soviet Union and
communist Eastern Europe
decline U.S. aid, citing "dollar
enslavement."
Marshall
Plan aid sent
to European
countries
Marshall
Aid
cartoon,
1947
Key Players in the Cold War: Leaders
of Russia
Joseph Stalin
•
Nikita Kruchev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Leonid Brezhnev
U.S. President
from 1945-1952
Harry Truman was elected as the 33rd
president of the United States.
Truman had a very strong belief in
containing Communism. The theory of
Containment was the hallmark of the
Truman administration. Illustrated by
the U.S. involvement in the Berlin
Airlift, becoming a member of NATO,
enacted the Marshall Plan, and the
establishment of the Truman Doctrine.
Joseph Stalin was
leader of the Soviet
Union from 1929
until 1953.
A ruthless dictator, he was the
first Cold War Soviet Premier.
Stalin played a key role in the
beginning of the Cold War by his
actions at the Yalta Conference.
He promoted a sense of distrust
and competition between East
and West. His aggressive
attempts to spread the Soviet
Empire elevated tensions
between East and West
escalating the Cold War.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a
truce in Korea and while trying to
ease the tensions of the Cold War.
• "America is today the strongest,
most influential, and most
productive nation in the world."
U.S. President from
1952 -1960
leader of the Soviet Union
from 1953 till 1964
Nikita Khrushchev elevated
Cold War tensions by ordering
the building of the Berlin Wall as
well as providing funds and
materials to communist North
Vietnam during the war. He
presided over the Cuban Missile
Crisis. He was Kennedy’s main
adversary throughout his
presidency.
John F. Kennedy played a key role in the
Cold War. He started aggressive American
involvement in Vietnam, as well as being
involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis,
and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and
President during the creation of the Berlin
U.S. President from Wall.
1960-1963
President from
1963 - 1968
Lyndon B. Johnson became President
hours after the assassination of John
F. Kennedy. During his campaign for
re-election, Johnson promised to
withdraw troops from Vietnam.
However, Johnson violated his
campaign promises and steadily
increased U.S. involvement in
Vietnam, for fear he would be the first
President to lose a war. His popularity
plummeted and he did not run for reelection.
President from 1968 - 1974
Richard Nixon carried out
Vietnamization ending the
war and removed
American troops from
Vietnam. Nixon also
negotiated and signed the
SALT treaty.
Under Brezhnev, The Soviet decision in 1968 to invade
Czechoslovakia was an early indicator of Brezhnev's
world view. In a speech justifying the move, he spelled
out what came to be called the "Brezhnev Doctrine,"
asserting Moscow's right to intervene in the affairs of
other socialist states. He supported U.S. antagonists
throughout the world; Vietnam, the Middle East and the
Third World. A new era of peace was heralded in 1972,
when Brezhnev and President Nixon signed the SALT
treaty, but the new era was short-lived.
By 1979, it was only a memory, as Brezhnev and his
comrades approved the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Years of heavy spending on the defense and aerospace
industries, at the expense of agriculture and other
sectors of the economy, had taken a toll, and economic
productivity and the Soviet standard of living fell into a
slow but steady decline under Brezhnev.
• http://www.opb.org/education/coldwar/berli
ncrisis/events/index.html