The Iron Curtain
USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War: Crash Course World History #39
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9HjvHZfCUI
Cold War chronology
1945 : ‘A’-Bomb dropped on Hiroshima + Nagasaki. USA ahead in the arms race.
1947 : Marshall Aid to the west of Europe. Stalin of USSR refused it for Eastern Europe.
1948 : start of the Berlin Blockade – ended in 1949
1949 : NATO established; USSR exploded her first ‘A’-bomb; China becomes communist
1950 : Korean War started.
1952 : USA exploded her first hyrogen bomb.
1953 : Korean War ended. USSR exploded her first hydrogen bomb. Stalin died.
1955 : Warsaw Pact created. ‘Peaceful coexistence’ called for.
1956 : Hungary revolts against USSR. Suez Crisis.
1957 : Sputnik launched.
1959 : Cuba becomes a communist state.
1961 : Military aid sent to Vietnam by USA for the first time. Berlin Wall built.
1962 : Cuban Missile Crisis.
1963 : Huge increase of American aid to Vietnam.
1965 : USA openly involved in Vietnam.
1967 : Six-Day War in Middle East.
1968 : USSR invades Czechoslovakia.
1973 : Yom Kippur War.
1979 : USSR invaded Afghanistan.
1986 : Meeting in Iceland between USSR (Gorbachev) and USA (Reagan).
1987 : INF Treaty signed.
Communism
US Cold War Interventions
Key Figures
United States
Allen Dulles
The director of the CIA under Eisenhower, who advocated extensive use of covert operations. Most notable among Dulles’s initiatives were U.S.-sponsored coups inIran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, which installed pro-American governments in order to curb potential expansion of Communism. Although Eisenhower favored such covert operations because they were relatively low-cost and attracted little attention, the coups in Iran and Guatemala proved rather transparent and caused international anger toward the United States.
John F. Kennedy
The thirty-fifth U.S. president, who set out to expand social welfare spending with his New Frontier program. Kennedy was elected in 1960, defeating RepublicanRichard M. Nixon. Feeling that their hands were tied by Eisenhower’s policy of “massive retaliation,” Kennedy and members of his foreign policy staff devised the tactic of “flexible response” to contain Communism. Kennedy sent “military advisors” to support Ngo Dinh Diem’s corrupt regime in South Vietnam and formed the Alliance for Progress to fight poverty and Communism in Latin America. He also backed the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, which ultimately led to the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963, after Kennedy had spent roughly 1,000 days in office, he was assassinated, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson took office.
Douglas MacArthur
Five-star American general who commanded Allied forces in the Pacific duringWorld War II. After the war, MacArthur led the American occupation in Japan, helped establish a democratic government there, and in large part rewrote the country’s new constitution outlawing militarism. He later commanded United Nations forces in Korea, driving North Korean forces back north of the 38th parallel after making the brilliant Inchon landing. He ignored Chinese warnings not to approach the North Korean–Chinese border at the Yalu River, however, and was subsequently driven back down to the 38th parallel by more than a million Chinese troops. President Harry S Truman later rejected MacArthur’s request to bomb North Korea and China with nuclear weapons. MacArthur’s public criticism of the president’s decision prompted Truman to remove him from command in 1951.
Joseph McCarthy
Republican senator from Wisconsin who capitalized on Cold War fears ofCommunism in the early 1950s by accusing hundreds of government employees of being Communists and Soviet agents. Although McCarthy failed to offer any concrete evidence to prove these claims, many Americans fully supported him. He ruined his own reputation in 1954 after humiliating himself during the televisedArmy-McCarthy hearings. Disgraced, he received an official censure from the Senate and died an alcoholic in 1957.
Richard M. Nixon
Republican congressman from California who rose to national fame as a prominent member of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s when he successfully prosecuted Alger Hiss for being a Communist. Nixon later served as vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. He lost his own bid for the presidency against John F. Kennedy in 1960 but defeated his Democratic opponent eight years later and became president in 1969.
Harry S Truman
Vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt who became president upon Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 and successfully carried out the remainder of World War II. Truman was instrumental in creating a new international political and economic order after the war, helping to form the United Nations, NATO, theWorld Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. His Marshall Plan also helped Western Europe rebuild after the war and surpass its prewar levels of industrial production. Determined not to let the Soviet Union spread Communism, Truman adopted the idea of containment, announcing his own Truman Doctrine in 1947. His characterization of the Soviet Union as a force of “ungodly” evil helped shape the Cold War of the next four decades. He also led the nation into the Korean Warbut eventually fired General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination.
Soviet Union
Nikita Khrushchev
The head of the Soviet Communist Party and leader of the USSR from 1958 until the early 1960s. Initially, many Americans hoped Khrushchev’s rise to power would lead to a reduction in Cold War tensions. Khrushchev toured the United States in1959 and visited personally with President Eisenhower at Camp David, Maryland. The U-2 incident and 1962 Cuban missile crisis, however, ended what little amity existed between the two nations and repolarized the Cold War. Party leaders, upset with Khrushchev for having backed down from the Cuban missile crisis, removed him from power in 1964.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
(born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet statesman. He was the seventh and last leader of the Soviet Union, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the country’s head of state from 1988 until its dissolutionin 1991
Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh
The nationalist, Communist leader of the Viet Minh movement, which sought to liberate Vietnam from French colonial rule throughout the 1950s. After being rebuffed by the United States, Ho received aid from the USSR and won a major victory over French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. This French defeat forced theGeneva Conference of 1954, which split Vietnam into Communist-dominated North Vietnam and French-backed South Vietnam.
Key Terms
Warsaw Pact
A pact signed by the USSR and Eastern European countries under Soviet influence in 1955. By signing the pact, they pledged mutual defense in response to the formation of NATO.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
An organization formed in 1949 that bound the United States, Canada, most of Western Europe, and later Greece and Turkey together in a mutual pact of defense against the USSR and Eastern bloc countries. The treaty had the additional effect of permanently tying American interests to political and economic stability in Europe.
Truman Doctrine
A doctrine articulated by President Harry S Truman that pledged American support for all “free peoples” fighting Communist aggression from foreign or domestic sources. Truman announced the doctrine in 1947, then convinced Congress to grant Greece and Turkey $400 million to help fight pro-Soviet insurgents. Besides committing the United States to the policy of containment, the language of the Truman Doctrine itself help characterize the Cold War as a conflict between good and evil.
History of the International System – Lecture Notes
Lecture 12 – Origins of the Cold War
Congress of Vienna – 1815 – 5 great powers
– Prussia, France, Britain, Russia, Hapsburg Monarchy
Paris Peace Conference – 1919 post WW1
– Russia has dropped out, in civil war/revolution
– Hapsburg Empire has dissolved
– Germany though subject is not participant
– Britain & France are joined by Japan in marginal role & United States
1945 post WW2 – No conference
– End of war is open ended
– Europe has shrunk back politically to what it was geographically
– New superpowers – USA & Soviet Union – rivalry inevitable due to radical difference in situation and ideology
– Harsh sentiments against the Japanese in America, internment camps in California
– America as a whole decides to turn its efforts to Europe/SU
– Potsdam Conference
– Main concern; what to do with Germany
– This is when the first nuclear weapon goes off in new Mexico
– 9, Feb, 1946 – Stalin goes to Bolshoi theatre in Moscow & gives election speech – emphasis on economic and socialist ideals, war is between capitalism (which leads to conflict) and communism
– The long telegraph – Kennan, basically predicts the cold war, basis for Doctrine of Containment
– 1947 – Truman Doctrine – America takes over many of Britain’s former spheres of influence to resist the expansion of communism as Soviet Union encroaches in Turkey (which is having a civil conflict w/ Yugoslavia)
– Communist regimes emerge in Soviet controlled areas across Eastern Europe as line of security
– Growing fear this will expand into Germany, Italy & France which have large and active communist parties
– Germany needed to be economically reinvigorated to keep rest of Europe afloat, new currency introduced into Western Germany, which violates Potsdam, Soviets close off access to Berlin (Berlin Blockage, broken by Berlin Airlift)
– Germany divided into 2 states, East & West
– NATO is created
Lecture 13 – Nuclear Strategy & Stagecraft
– The more you invest in defense, the more you invite your opponent to invest in offence
– Might also be seen as prelude to a first strike to insulate you from the enemies retaliatory move
learn it all 