The Cold War Begins

Chapter 151945-1960

The Atomic AgeLiving in the 1950’s with the threat of a Nuclear War

Brinksmanship

Eurasia post World War II

YALTA (in the USSR)Date: Feb 1945

Present: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin

POTSDAM (Germany)Date: July 1945

Present: Churchill, Truman and Stalin

Iron Curtain – A term used by Winston

Churchill to describe the separating of Those

communistlands of East Europe from

the West.

Improve your knowledge

The Russians took very high casualties to capture Berlin in May 1945. They spent the early occupation trying to take over all zones of the city but were stopped by German democrats such as Willy Brandt and Konrad Adenauer. Reluctantly the Russians had to admit the Americans, French and British to their respective zones.

Political foreign relations after World War II were aggravated by a difference in how Germany should be controlled in the post-war world. The United States believed that Germany and the rest of Europe should be helped economically to rebuild from the devastation caused by war. Stalin saw this as an attempt by the United States to take over Europe. The Cold War had begun.

When President Truman announced to the American people that Russia had an atomic bomb, a program of nuclear preparedness began.

Many cities formulated defense plans. The illustration below is a warning plan from the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

School kids were a focus of the campaign, drills, and other activities designed to raise awareness of the possibilities of nuclear war. One activity was duck-and-cover.

Student awareness groups were very popular. Many held Civil Defense fairs to pass out flyers on nuclear preparedness. Student clubs were quite popular!!

The next two slides are of a flyer on Civil Defense from 1955

Nuclear war drills became a part of the school day.

FCDA held Family Fallout Shelter exhibitions in towns across the USA.

Anti-Communist hysteria swept the country!!!

Home owners installed bomb shelters in the backyards of suburbia.

Cities prepared evacuation plans in the event of a nuclear attack. The plan below is from Detroit.

Kill Zone

Nuclear Missiles!

Improve your knowledge The nuclear bomb gave America a lead

which was expected to last at least 5 years. The rapid Russian development of nuclear technology, helped by the work of the “atom spies” was a shock.

Significantly, Russia hurriedly declared war against Japan at the beginning of August 1945 and rushed to advance into Asia to stake out a position for the post-war settlement. This helped make both the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts more likely.

Atomic Age Frayer Model

Atomic Age

Reason for it to occur Schools

CD Interventions Home

Atomic Age Quiz1. What were the two meetings of the Big Three that

were concluding WWII?2. What was the competitiveness between the two

superpowers over nuclear weapons?3. What government agency developed fall out plans

and awareness about nuclear attacks?4. What was one of the activities that school children

practiced as part of the school day?5. What were families investing in to give themselves an

added measure of protection against nuclear attacks?

How did the USA try to contain communism?

Cold WarThe term cold war refers to the strategic and political struggle that developed after World War II between the United States and its Western European allies, on one hand, and the USSR and Communist countries, on the other. The expression was coined by the American journalist Herbert Bayard Swope in a 1947 speech he wrote for financier Bernard Baruch.

The cold war initially centered on the use of USSR military forces to install Communist government in Eastern Europe. These Soviet actions ran counter to the U.S. government’s insistence upon the right of self-determination for the peoples of Eastern Europe and raised fears that the USSR, after gaining control of Eastern Europe and raised fears that the USSR, after gaining control of Eastern Europe, would try to communize Western Europe. The USSR had suffered enormous losses in the war against Nazi Germany and looked upon Eastern Europe as a bulwark against another invasion from the West. The Soviet leaders considered U.S. objections to Soviet actions in Poland, Hungary, and Romania a betrayal of wartime understandings about spheres of influence in Europe. Thus they placed Eastern Europe behind a military and political barrier known in the West as the Iron Curtain—coined by Winston Churchill.

The Truman Doctrine

Truman, who has been chosen as vice president for domestic political reasons, was poorly prepared to assume the presidency. He had no experience in foreign affairs, knew little about Roosevelt’s intentions, and was intimidated by the giant shoes he now had to fill. His first decisions were dictated by events or plans already laid. In July, two months after the German forces surrendered, he met at Potsdam, Ger., with Stalin and Churchill (who was succeeded at the conference by Clement Attlee) to discuss future operations against Japan and a peace settlement for Europe. Little was accomplished, and there would not be another meeting between Soviet and American heads of state for 10 years.

Hopes that good relations between the superpowers would ensure world peace soon faded as a result of the Stalinization of eastern Europe and Soviet support of communist insurgencies in various parts of the globe. Events came to a head in 1947 when Britain, weakened by a failing economy, decided to pull out of the eastern Mediterranean. This would leave both Greece, where a communist-inspired civil war was raging, and Turkey to the mercies of the Soviet Union. Truman now came into his own as a national leader, asking Congress to appropriate aid to Greece and Turkey and asserting, in effect, that henceforth the United States must help free peoples in general to resist communist aggression. This policy, known as the Truman Doctrine, has been criticized for committing the United States to the support of unworthy regimes and for taking on greater burdens than it was safe to assume. At first, however, the Truman Doctrine was narrowly applied. Congress appropriated $400,000,000 for Greece and Turkey, saving both from falling into

The Truman Doctrine (cont’d)

unfriendly hands, and thereafter the United States relied mainly on economic assistance to support its foreign policy.

The keystone of this policy, and its greatest success, was the European Recovery Program, usually called the Marshall Plan. Thus, in June 1947 Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed the greatest foreign-aid program in world history in order to bring Europe back to economic health. In 1948, Congress created the Economic Cooperation Administration and over the next five years poured some $13,000,000,000 worth of aid into western Europe. (Assistance was offered to Eastern-bloc countries also, but they were forced by Stalin to decline.)

U.S. policy for limiting Soviet expansion had developed with remarkable speed. Soon after the collapse of hopes for world peace in 1945 and 1946, the Truman administration had accepted the danger posed by Soviet aggression and resolved to shore up noncommunist defenses at their most critical points. This policy, known as containment, a term suggested by its principal framer, George Kennan, resulted in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as in the decision to make the western zones of Germany (later West Germany) a pillar of strength. When the Soviet Union countered this development in June 1948 by blocking all surface routes into the western-occupied zones of Berlin (Berlin Blockade), Britain, and the United States supplied the sectors by air for almost a year until the Soviet Union called off the blockade. A logical culmination of U.S. policy was the creation in 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance among 12 (later 16) nations to resist Soviet aggression.

Truman Doctrine

The Truman Doctrine in March 1947 promised that the USA “would support free peoples who are resisting” communism.

This led to containment – policy of containing communism where it is and not letting it spread.

Domino Theory

Communism spreads like a disease

Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan, formally known as the European Recovery Program, was a program of U.S. economic and technical assistance to 16 European countries after World War II. Its objectives were to restore the war-ravaged West European economy and to stimulate economic growth and trade among the major non-Communist countries.

In early 1947 as the cold war between the United States and the USSR began to take shape, U.S. policymakers concluded that Western Europe would require substantial economic aid in order to attain political stability. This program, announced by Secretary of State George C. Marshall in an address to Harvard University on 5 Jun 1947, proposed that the European countries draw up a unified plan for economic reconstruction to be funded by the United States. The USSR and other countries of Eastern Europe were invited to join, but they declined. The Economic Cooperation administration was established by the United States to administer the plan, with Paul G. Hoffman as head. The 16 West European countries then formed the Organization for European Economic Cooperation to coordinate the program.

From 1948 to 1952, the 16 participating countries received $13.15 billion in U.S. aid. The program succeeded in reviving the West European economy and setting it on the path of long-term growth.

Marshall Plan – helped countries economically so they wouldn’t go red.

See a pattern?USSR

China

North Korea

Vietnam

Poland

Albania

Vietnam War- Helped anti-communist troops

Embargoes Refusing to trade or aid countries in order to punish them

Cuba

Cuba embargo

Still today, the USA has an economic embargo on communist Cuba.

Their only cars are from before the embargo!

Marshall Plan

USA’s plan to send food, blankets, and fuel to Europe to

help them AND to keep them from turning communist.

Two sides of Cold War

NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization

USA, France, Great Britain, West Germany

CAPITALISM

Warsaw Pact –Soviets strong-armed the countries to join, and all countries controlled by the USSR.

COMMUNISM

Cold War

The Cold War was a period after WWII when the USA and the Soviet Union were the super powers rivaling for their spheres of world influence.

NATO vs. Warsaw PactThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in 1949 by representatives from 12 nations (later 16 nations): Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982. The North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in Washington, D.C., on 4 Apr 1949, provided for mutual defense and collective security, primarily against the threat of aggression by the Soviet Union. It was the first peacetime alliance joined by the United States.

The Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), often called the Warsaw Pact, was a military alliance (1955-91) between the USSR and its Eastern European satellites. The WTO was established in Warsaw on 14 May 1955, as an Eastern counterpart to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The original Warsaw Pact nations were the USSR, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The WTO had a unified high command with headquarters in Moscow. Key posts in satellite forces were held by Soviet-trained or Soviet-born officers. In 1956, Hungary withdrew from the WTO but was pulled back into the alliance when Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian Revolution. In 1968, Czechoslovakia also attempted to withdraw but was forced back in by an invasion of Warsaw Pact forces led by the Soviet Union. Albania was allowed to resign in 1958. With the end of the cold war and the fall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the WTO lost its reason for existence.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) vs. Warsaw Pact

Communist Containment Concept Map

Communist Containment

Policy

Definition

Examples

Forms of Policies (pro or con

Cold War Definition

Communist Containment Quiz1. What were the two “super powers” that emerged from

WWII?2. When the Soviet Union took control of Eastern Europe,

what did Winston Churchill say divided Europe?3. Name one of the policies of communist containment

(for or against).4. Give an example of conflicts during the beginning of

communist containment.5. What two organizations were developed as a result of

the Cold War?

Berlin blockade led to Berlin Airlift

Berlin WallBerlin Wall

The Berlin WallThe Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer), was a barrier that surrounded West Berlin and prevented access to it from East Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany during the period from 1961 to 1989. In the years between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans had fled from East to West Germany, including steadily rising numbers of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals. Their loss threatened to destroy the economic viability of the East German state. In response, East Germany built a barrier to close off East Germans’ access to West Berlin (and hence West Germany). This barrier, the Berlin Wall, was first erected on the night of 12-13 Aug 1961, as the result of a decree passed on 12 Aug by the East German Volkskammer (“People’s Chamber”). The original wall, built of barbed wire and cinder blocks, was subsequently replaced by a series of concrete walls (up to 15 ft. high) that were topped with barbed wire and guarded with watchtowers, gun emplacement, and mines. By the 1980’s, this system of walls, electrified fences, and fortifications extended 28 miles through Berlin, dividing the two parts of the city, and extended a further 75 miles around West Berlin, separating it from the rest of East Germany.

Berlin Wall-a concrete wall topped with barbed wire that severed the city in two (communism/democracy). **Berlin Airlift

Berlin Wall

Berlin is Germany’s capital city.

The Soviets built the wall to keep defectors from escaping to the American sector.

Wall torn down in 1989.

Alger Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Blacklist-A blacklist is a list or register of persons (communists or union leaders/strikers) who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. To blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg- were American communists who were executed after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. The charges were in relation to the passing of information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.

H-Bomb- 1952 Weapon of mass destruction that was 25-50 times more powerful than the original bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. After a test of its power by the US, its byproduct traveled around the world and had devastating environmental effects. It was estimated that the explosion of 100 H-bombs could have made life in this very world unsustainable.

Brinkmanship-is the practice of pushing a dangerous situation to the verge of disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. It occurs in international politics, foreign policy, labor relations and for our interest in military strategies during the cold war involving the threatened use of nuclear weapons.

Chiang Kai-Shek- Nationalist leader in China before their Communist Revolution. His regime was corrupt and the US supported him and wanted to see his policies prevail because he was friendly to the U.S. Unfortunately his political rival Mao Tse-tung, far more corrupt, was able to win over the people and gain more political power “through the barrel of a gun” by becoming the largest mass murdering megalomaniac in history.

CIA-Central Intelligence Agency (formerly The Office of Strategic Services OSS)-a U.S. agency created to gather secret information about foreign governments. Our intelligence on the USSR was not complete.

Korea and Vietnam

USA tried to contain communism. In both wars, communist troops fought armies trained and funded by the USA.

The Korean WarIt was a conflict that began in June 1950 between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which resulted in an estimated 4,000,000 casualties, including civilians. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal participant, joined the war on the side of the South Koreans, and the People’s Republic of China eventually came to North Korea’s aid. After exceptional vicissitudes, the war ended inconclusively in July 1953; it established a precedent for United States intervention to contain communist expansion.

At the end of World War II, the Allies agreed that Soviet forces would accept the surrender of Japanese troops in Korea north of the 38th degree of latitude, while American troops would accept the Japanese surrender south of that line. In 1947, after the failure of negotiations to achieve the unification of the two separate Korean states that had thus been created, the United States turned the problem over to the United Nations. The Soviet Union refused to cooperate with UN plans to hold general elections in the two Koreas, and, as a result, a communist state was permanently established under the Soviet auspices in the north and a pro-Western state was set up in the south.

On 25 Jun 1950, the North Koreans, with the tacit approval of the Soviet Union, unleashed a carefully planned attack southward across the 38th parallel. The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session and passed a resolution calling for the assistance of all UN members in halting the North Korean invasion. On 27 Jun, U.S. President Harry Truman, without asking Congress to declare war, ordered United States forces to come to

The Korean War (cont’d)the assistance of South Korea as part of the UN “police action.”

Meanwhile, GEN Douglas MacArthur was demanding the authority to blockade China’s coastline and bomb its Manchurian bases. Truman refused, feeling that such a course would bring the Soviet Union into the war and thus lead to a global conflict. In response, MacArthur appealed over Truman’s head directly to the American public in an effort to enlist support for his war aims. On 11 Apr 1951, President Truman relieved MacArthur as UN commander and as commander of U.S. forces in the Far East and replaced him with GEN Matthew B. Ridgeway. On 10 Jul 1951, truce talks began while the North Koreans and Chinese vainly strove for further success on the battlefield. The negotiations dragged on for months, but in the fall of 1952 and the victory of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had criticized the unpopular war and announced his intention to visit Korea if elected. Eisenhower secretly informed the North Koreans and Chinese that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons and would also carry the war to China if a peace agreement was not reached. After a brief renewal of hostilities in June 1953, an armistice was concluded on 27 Jul, and the front line was accepted as the de facto boundary between North and South Korea. The exchange and repatriation of prisoners soon followed.

Communists invaded from the north. China sent a million troops to help reds.

President Harry S. Truman and GEN Douglas MacArthurMacArthur addressing an audience of 50,000 at Soldier Field, Chicago, April 25, 1951

President Harry S. Truman's draft order terminating MacArthur as Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, Commander in Chief, Far East; and Commanding General, U.S. Army, Far East. Senator Robert Taft in the Chicago Tribune called for immediate impeachment proceedings against Truman: President Truman must be impeached and convicted. His hasty and vindictive removal of Gen. MacArthur is the culmination of series of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office. The American nation has never been in greater danger. It is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves.On April 18, 1951, MacArthur received a ticker-tape parade in San Francisco, attended by hundreds of thousands of people. MacArthur received another ticker-tape parade in New York City, on April 22, 1951. At the time, the New York City parade was the largest ticker-tape parade in history. The Diet (Japanese parliament) passed a resolution of gratitude for MacArthur, and Emperor Hirohito visited him at the embassy in person, the first time a Japanese Emperor had ever visited a foreigner with no standing. The Mainichi newspaper said:"MacArthur's dismissal is the greatest shock since the end of the war. He dealt with the Japanese people not as a conqueror but a great reformer. He was a noble political missionary. What he gave us was not material aid and democratic reform alone, but a new way of life, the freedom and dignity of the individual. We shall continue to love and trust him as one of the Americans who best understood Japan's position.” MacArthur left Japan on April 16, 1951. That morning, 250,000 Japanese lined the street to say goodbye to their respected General "Makassar." Signs read:"We Love You, MacArthur," "With Deep Regret," "Sayonara," and "We are Grateful to the General.

Korean WarAfter the failure of the promise of Korean independence by the Allied nations, on June 25, 1950, communist North Korean troops invaded South Korea. Poorly armed, the South Koreans were no match for the North. The United Nations ordered North Korea to withdraw its troops. General MacArthur was appointed to command all UN troops in Korea. After three years of fighting a stalemate, more than 54,000 American troops perished.

Korean War-The Korean War refers to a period of military conflict between North Korean and South Korean regimes, with major hostilities lasting from June 25, 1950 until the armistice signed on July 27, 1953.

Mao Tse-tung (Zedong)--Communist leader of China who was once quoted as saying to the U.S. “your nuclear weapons are like a paper tiger”, he almost brought the US into another nuclear war. He also said, “Power comes from the end of the barrel of a gun.”

HUAC- House Un-American Activities is best known for investigating communism in America and specifically within the film industry and on college campuses.

Joseph McCarthy & McCarthyism-A senator from Wisconsin who made accusations that numerous people in the government were communists. The Venona Project which was still highly classified could not back up his accusations without divulging its sources and existence. Eventually, the communist-liberal left accused him of wild accusations and he was ousted from his government position as senator. He became an alcoholic because of the media’s attacks on him and accused him of conducting a witch hunt.

VENONA Project

The Venona project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving crypto-analysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II. There were at least 13 codewords for this project that were used by the US and British intelligence agencies (including the NSA); "Venona" was the last that was used. That code word has no known meaning. (In the decrypted documents issued from the National Security Agency, "VENONA" is written in capitals, but lowercasing is common in modern journalism.) The project was started on February 1, 1941 during World War II but was not regularly depended on until the Cold War.

During the initial years of the Cold War, the Venona project was a source of information on Soviet intelligence-gathering activity that was directed at the Western military powers. Although unknown to the public, and even to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, these programs were of importance concerning crucial events of the early Cold War. These included the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spying case and the defections of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess to the Soviet Union.

VENONA Project (cont’d)There were many new scientists who worked on decrypting the Soviet messages but the ones who made the biggest difference were Richard Hallock, Cecil Phillips, Robert Lamphere, and Meredith Gardener.

Most decipherable messages were transmitted and intercepted between 1942 and 1945. Sometime in 1945, the existence of the Venona program was revealed to the Soviet Union by the NKVD agent and United States Army SIGINT analyst and cryptologist Bill Weisband. These messages were slowly and gradually decrypted beginning in 1946 and continuing (many times at a low-level of effort in the latter years) through 1980, when the Venona program was terminated, and the remaining amount of effort that was being spent on it was moved to more important projects.

To what extent the various individuals were involved with Soviet intelligence is a topic of dispute. While a number of academic people and historians assert that most of the individuals mentioned in the Venona decrypts were most likely either clandestine assets and/or contacts of Soviet intelligence agents, others argue that many of those people probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.

Venona (cont’d)The parts of the messages deciphered by Gardner and Lamphere held information about whom and where KGB spies were. These messages contained information about KGB in Latin America, the presidential campaigns during the 1944 elections, and the names of a few scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project (creation of the atomic bomb). One note even said that the Soviets had a man inside the War Department that was giving them U.S. secrets, but this is unconfirmed. The most important information found by Gardner was the cover names of the spies that were running missions in the United States, they also found out who or what some of the cover names stood for. Some of the cover names looked simple enough to figure out, President Roosevelt’s cover name was Kapitan, but some less important people had names such as God. Arlington Hall was able to decrypt these names: Liberal – Julius Rosenberg, Babylon – San Francisco, The Bank – U.S. Dept. of State, Arsenal – U.S. War Dept., and Anton – Leonid Kvasnikov (the leader of the KGB atomic bomb espionage). The Soviets were very careful to pick cover names and only made a few mistakes such as Boris Moros’s name, Frost which means “moroz” in Russian. The decryptions show that many of Stalin’s top agents were in many top governmental agencies.

Meredith Gardner (far left); most of the other code breakers were young women.

Nikita Khrushchev-Political leader of USSR who succeeded Stalin, who brought the world very close to WW III/Nuclear War. He made the statement to the U.S.—”We will bury you!”

1957 Sputnik – first satellite

Score 1 for Soviets!

First man in space- Yuri GagarinScore: USA – 0 Soviets - 2

Francis Gary Powers- Pilot who was flying the U-2 spy plane that was shot down over USSR. He was initially sentenced to prison, but was later released. U-2 Incident- The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960 (during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower) when an American U-S spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. At first, the United States government denied the plane's purpose and mission, but was forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft when the Soviet government produced its remains (largely intact) and surviving pilot, Gary Powers.

Cold War Intervention Concept Map

What are some people involved?

Cold War Intervention

What are some examples?What are some agencies involved?

Cold War Intervention Quiz1. What did the Warsaw Pact build to stem the flow of Germans

fleeing East Berlin?2. What two groups of people were convicted of espionage and

imprisoned and/or executed?3. Who were the two leaders that the civil war in China were

between that resulted in the Communist Revolution.4. Give two agencies that were involved in Cold War

intervention?

5. What two Soviet events scared the USA that they were falling behind in technology?